ResearchComparison

Opportunity vs Risk: Where the Tradeoff Looks Best

Every relocation is a trade. Here is what the two dimensions look like plotted against each other across published city profiles.

AreaProfile ResearchPublished August 29, 2026Data as of FEMA National Risk Index v1.20.0 and the latest BLS release

Key findings

Madison, WI records the strongest combination, at 80 for Opportunity and 97 for Physical Resilience.
Among cities scoring 60 or above on Opportunity, resilience ranges from 9 to 97 — the tradeoff is real and wide.
10 of the 10 strong-labour-market cities listed carry at least one hazard rated elevated or high.

Opportunity and physical resilience are largely independent — a strong labor market says nothing about hurricane exposure. That makes the combination worth looking at directly rather than through a single blended score.

Strongest on both

City	Opportunity	Resilience	Combined
Madison, WI	80	97	177
Atlanta, GA	85	83	169
Boston, MA	68	97	165
Des Moines, IA	75	89	164
Sioux Falls, SD	79	83	162
Pittsburgh, PA	80	81	161
Boise City, ID	79	82	161
Austin, TX	84	75	159
Cincinnati, OH	69	89	158
Lincoln, NE	83	75	157
Raleigh, NC	85	73	157
Spokane, WA	66	89	156
Columbus, OH	79	77	156
Yonkers, NY	70	85	155
Fort Wayne, IN	77	77	155

Cities with the highest combined Opportunity and Physical Resilience.

Strong jobs, higher exposure

City	Opportunity	Resilience	Principal elevated hazard
San Diego, CA	66	9	Wildfire
Irvine, CA	66	12	Earthquake
Huntington Beach, CA	64	12	Earthquake
Reno, NV	77	23	Wildfire
Anchorage, AK	86	24	Earthquake
Hialeah, FL	64	24	Hurricane
Miami, FL	71	24	Hurricane
San Jose, CA	75	25	Earthquake
Lubbock, TX	64	26	Hail
Jersey City, NJ	79	29	Inland flooding

Cities scoring 60 or above on Opportunity with the lowest Physical Resilience.

Neither table says one city is better than another. They describe a tradeoff, and how much each side of it matters is a personal judgment — Customize Your Score exists for exactly that.

Methodology

The AreaProfile Opportunity and Physical Resilience signals for every published city profile of 100,000 or more residents. The table shows the cities furthest above the line where the two are balanced — that is, the largest sum of the two signals — and, separately, the cities where a strong job market comes with the most hazard exposure.

Sources

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Local Area Unemployment Statistics (la)
Federal Emergency Management Agency — National Risk Index (1.20.0)
U.S. Census Bureau — American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (Table-Based Summary File) (2024)

Area Profiles

Rankings

This report is generated from a stored query against the AreaProfile database. See the methodology for how the underlying data is collected and normalized, and the editorial policy for how these reports are written.