Moving into a first apartment is a rite of passage, but the math behind making it a reality is becoming a bigger obstacle. The metros with the strongest job markets also have the steepest living costs, and over the past few years, rent in these areas has climbed faster than paychecks. Cheap rent isn’t the only solution, though. Thin wages and flat hiring shut young people out of many cities.

Rove Lab’s new analysis identifies the cities in the middle ground with the most to offer young people establishing their lives. The study examined the 100 most populous U.S. metro areas and scored each one on 10 different metrics grouped into three weighted categories.

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Financial affordability was the most important category, carrying 60% of the weight. This category covers average annual wage, wage growth, median rent and utility costs, rent-to-income ratio, and cost of living relative to the national average. Cost of living alone received 20% of the weight, the heaviest single metric in the study. Opportunity and access accounted for 24% and included employment growth, number of residents between 22 and 34, and amount of rental vacancy. The final 16% went to entertainment and dining, tracking the number of arts and recreation venues and restaurants and bars per 100,000 residents. Each metric was standardized, scored, and weighted into a final number out of 100.

The winning city was Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, Arkansas, with a score of 74.24. This isn’t an obvious winner until you look at the numbers. Wages increased by 20.5% from 2022 to 2025, with the average wage at $77,165 and a cost of living that’s 8.65% below the national average. This combination creates a rent-to-income ratio of 19%, leaving young people with money to save, potentially for the elusive dream of homeownership. Fortune 500 companies, Walmart, J.B. Hunt, and Tyson, have a home in the area and likely explain wage strength.

Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos followed with a 73.93 score, driven by a thriving tech sector that’s seen 8.7% employment growth, and the area offers 30,000 vacant rental units for newcomers. Des Moines, Baton Rouge, and Nashville round out the top five.

A few cities earned high rankings thanks to low housing costs. Pittsburgh was seventh overall with a rent-to-income ratio of 17.6%. Wichita, ranked ninth, has low rent and utilities and a low cost of living that’s 11.05% below average. Toledo, number 25 on the list, has the cheapest housing of all cities on the list, with an average of $949 a month.

The most surprising cities on the list are Californian. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara ranks 21st, and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont lands 24th, despite costs of living well above the national average. Salaries do the heavy lifting, averaging $208,877 and $146,433, respectively. This pulls down San Jose’s rent-to-income ratio to 16.2%, the lowest on the list.

If you were to ask the average American on the street to name the industries that power the national economy, they’ll likely reply “manufacturing” or “tech.” But the Bureau of Economic Analysis says otherwise. As Ooma’s study shows, real estate, rental, and leasing hold the biggest slice of the U.S. economy.

In 2024, the U.S. produced more than $29 trillion in economic output, which outstripped Germany, China, and Japan combined. Looking at how gross domestic product (GDP) breaks down by industry shows the value added by sector after subtracting the costs of the inputs that industry consumed. For example, a carmaker buys steel, rubber, and semiconductors. The value added is the difference between those purchases and the selling price of the finished car. Add up that gap, the value added across every industry in the country, and you arrive at the GDP.

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When Ooma ranked industries by their GDP, they found out that the money is concentrated in these industries:

Real estate, rental, and leasing – 13.8%: Real estate alone accounted for $3.68 trillion, the biggest of any sub-industry in the economy. Every mortgage payment, property tax bill, apartment lease, and commercial rent check pours into this sector. Rising home ownership costs over the past decade have pushed more citizens into renting, which has only inflated this industry.

Manufacturing – 9.8%: Factory employment has fallen for forty years due to automation and offshoring, but output hasn’t fallen. Chemical products created $554 billion, and computer and electronic products contributed $299.8 billion to the U.S. economy, helping keep the nation among the world’s top manufacturing nations despite a smaller workforce.

Professional, scientific, and technical services – 8.0%: This industry is made up of law firms, consultancies, engineering firms, and software developers. Legal services alone created $387.7 billion, and computer systems design added $552.2 billion to the American economy. This strongly shows how the American economy leans toward knowledge work.

Finance and insurance – 7.6%: Credit intermediation and Federal Reserve banks generated $1.01 trillion, insurance carriers contributed $791.8 billion, and securities and commodity contracts brought in $396.1 billion.

State and local government – 7.6%: Many rankings leave out these sectors, but government at the state and local level added $2.07 trillion, second only to real estate among all the sub-industries.

Health care and social assistance – 7.5%: Ambulatory care brought in $1.08 trillion and hospitals contributed $691.5 billion. This reflects genuine demand from an aging population and the fact that the U.S. spends more per capita on healthcare than any other developed nation.

Below these top-tier industries, retail trade, wholesale trade, information (Google, Meta, cloud providers, telecom), data processing, and internet publishing followed. Construction closed out the top ten industries at 4.5%, rising and falling in contributions with the real estate sector.

The largest components of American GDP aren’t the ones that produce a physical product. They’re the industries that manage property, deliver care, sell expertise, and move money.

Smartphones are a central part of modern life after a meteoric rise over the past decade. As technology advances, smartphones have developed more features, better cameras, larger screens, and greater connectivity. While many fans clamor for these upgrades, a growing countertrend calls for simpler options, more like phones from a decade ago. Enter the “dumb phone.” The team at Ooma created a timeline that tracks the rise of the dumb phone trend, helping us understand how it happened, what it entails, and why it’s even a thing.

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Their timeline compares the number of smartphones vs dumbphones each year from 2007 to 2024. Their data is sourced from the U.S. International Trade Commission, which logged units sold, customs values, and value per unit for both types of devices. Visualizing 17 years of this data helps highlight key inflection points. Over the course of the data, we can see the early dominance of the smartphone and the decline of the dumb phone through the mid-2010s. In the late 2010s, the dumb phone made a comeback, leading to a spike in popularity in 2022.

Before diving deeper into the data, it’s helpful to define the difference between smartphones and dumb phones. Smartphones are essentially pocket computers, mini versions of laptops or tablets. They have large touchscreens, advanced cameras, internet, and social media connectivity. Dumb phones are simple, focused solely on calls and texts. They have limited Internet connectivity and T9 keypads; that means no touch screens.

When 91% of Americans own a smartphone, a 35% increase since 2011, it’s hard to see how or why the dumb phone is gaining popularity, but the numbers tell the story. In 2022, more dumb phones were sold than smartphones. This could be because of growing research warning of the dangers of excessive screen time. Americans average five hours of phone use per day, but excessive screen time leads to sleep disruption, poor mental health, and reduced attention spans. Data privacy issues dominate the news cycle, too. Smartphones collect personal data, which is used for targeted advertising at best and for leaks and data compromise at worst. Dumb phones don’t have these vulnerabilities. A surprising advantage of dumb phones is the battery life. Many of them can go for days on a single charge, something smartphones can’t match.

Dumb phone sales peaked in 2022 and have since leveled off, but they remain well above their lowest point, when smartphones seemed poised to replace dumb phones forever. For now, the forecast seems to show dumb phones are here to stay. The resurgence of dumb phones highlights a shift toward simplicity and mindfulness in technology use. As concerns about screen time, privacy, and mental health grow, many Americans are opting for basic devices. This trend signals that, despite advancements, there’s value in taking a step back and prioritizing well-being over constant connectivity.