Brandi Funk is a board-certified family nurse practitioner and a healthcare industry expert with 20 years of experience working in hospital, private practice, retail clinic, and research settings. She is a faculty member at Azusa Pacific University, school of nursing and owner of BodyBalance Holistic Health Solutions. Her mission and passion is to help others achieve optimum health through lifestyle medicine and lower health care costs in America. She is the award winning author of “Cut Your Health Care Costs Now!” an American's guide to finding affordable healthcare. Brandi can be found at 
The Great Recession displaced large numbers of jobs and as a result, many have begun reevaluating where to base their careers. Due to the inherent need for them in any community, nurses have greater flexibility in where they live. Finding a nursing job in any city is contingent on a number of factors, such as the quality of healthcare providers and the density of an elderly demographic. These seven cities are the most intuitive for finding jobs in the nursing profession:
1. Rochester, Minnesota
Rochester is a community of about 107,000 people and employs three times the national average of nurses with a surprisingly high annual mean wage of $81,650. The city is the best choice for nurses in the country due to the relative cost of living and being home to the renowned Mayo Clinic (pictured below).
2. Boston, Massachusetts
Boston boasts employment numbers well above the national average and has the highest concentration of nursing jobs available among major American cities, in part due to a plethora of accredited hospitals, such as Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital. Additionally, of areas with the highest employment of nurses, Boston ranks first in annual mean wage at $94,600.
3. San Francisco, California
The metropolitan San Francisco bay area comprises the four top paying areas for nurses in the country with annual mean wages ranging from $105,000 to $120,000 and employment numbers that all hover right around the national average. The University of California, San Francisco Medical Center is regarded as one of the best hospitals in the country and is also number one for transplants.
4. St. Louis, Missouri
Employing over 36,000 nurses makes St. Louis the 7th largest employer of nurses in the country, but relative to it’s size, it ranks second in concentration of nursing jobs among major American cities. St. Louis is also regarded as a hub for healthcare and is home to the fifth-largest hospital in the world, Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
5. Chicago, Illinois
Chicago has the second largest employment level for nurses in the country. Among New York City, Los Angeles, and itself, Chicago is the only city to meet the national average on nursing employment levels. The Illinois Medical District houses a variety of medical centers, including Rush University Medical Center and The University of Chicago Medical Center.
6. Gainesville, Florida
Gainesville benefits from extremely low costs of living, as well as a concentration of nurses that is double the national average. This is helped, in part, from institutions such as Shands HealthCare, Veterans Health Administration, and North Florida Regional Medical Center.
7. New York City, New York
The metropolitan area of New York City employs close to 100,000 nurses, which is by far the largest in the country. The large population of the city dilutes the concentration of nursing jobs, but the jobs are plentiful and has a very appealing annual mean wage of $83,060.
