One of the advantages of top-tier MBA degrees is their portability – candidates from top schools often have the opportunity to work in any city they want. For certain industries such as the federal government, a location like Washington, D.C. is synonymous with the industry and is regarded as “the place to be” in terms of career growth. But what if there was a way to analyze what U.S. cities have to offer MBA students?
Utilizing data provided by MBAs across the nation, we are able to analyze metrics such as average compensation, the most common functional roles and industries, and the companies that hire a large number of MBAs in any major city in the United States. Second up in our analysis: Seattle, Washington.
(This entry is part of a series exploring such measures for various cities. You can find our other entries in the series here: Austin, New York, San Francisco, and San Jose.)
According to the sources Numbeo and Apartment List, the average cost of living in Seattle is approximately $3450/month, with the median rent of a one-bedroom being $2300/month. In terms of the average post-MBA salary in this city, the data indicates it is around $122,710 while the average post-MBA compensation is $196,048.
City ranks for three separate measures out of a total of 55 evaluated cities
When looking at the top ten industries of the MBA living in this city, Technology, Internet, & Ecommerce leads the pack by a large margin with 70.9% of MBAs belonging to this industry, followed by Retail and Consulting with 8.7% and 6.2%, respectively. Insurance and Manufacturing tie at fourth place with 2% each while Aerospace & Aviation, Diversified Financial Services, and Hospitals, Medicine, & Healthcare Services trail at fifth with 1.1% each. Computer Services & Information Technology and Food, Beverage, & Tobacco finish off the list with approximately .8% each. Our other category, which constituted 5.3% of our data, included industries such as Investment Management, Arts & Media, and Education.
Now that it has been established what the popular industries for business students in Seattle are, let’s take a look at the functions they are hired for. Product Management comes in first with 30.0% followed by Marketing with 12.6% and Corporate Finance with 12.3%. General Management and Consulting take fourth and fifth place with 10.6% and 7.8%. Business Development comes in sixth with 6.2%, followed closely by Operations with 5.9%. Corporate Strategy grabs the eighth position with 4.2%. Project Management rounds out the list with 2.0% while the Other category encapsulates 1.7%.
You may be wondering which employers are hiring for these MBA functions. According to the data, the top 5 employers are Amazon (54.1%), Microsoft (19.9%), Liberty Mutual Group (2.0%), Fortive (1.7%), and Starbucks (1.4%).
However, when specifically looking at the top employers for the Technology, Internet, & Ecommerce Industry, Amazon has 64.0%, Microsoft has 19.9%, and Zillow has 1.6% of all the MBAs in our dataset from this industry living in Seattle. Trailing behind them is Remitly with 0.8% and All Star Directories with 0.4%. In contrast, Retail—the next most common industry— has its top employers as Amazon with 83.9%, Starbucks with 9.7%, and Nordstrom and The North Face with 3.2% each. Likewise, Consulting has a different set of top employers with the Boston Consulting Group having 18.2%, Deloitte Consulting having 13.6%, followed by Lenati with 9.1%, and Accenture and Bain & Company tying for fourth place with 4.5% each.
The last question asked was which business schools have the most alumni working in this city. Surprisingly, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business comes in first with the alumni making up 12.6% of the data. Northwestern Kellogg School of Management—another Illinois business school—makes up 9.2%. This is followed by University of Washington Foster School of Business with 7.0%, University of Michigan Ross School of Business with 6.4%, and the MIT Sloan School of Management with 5.9%.
MBAs of Seattle– City Guide:
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