Metropolitan-area population: 2.0 million
Who's hiring now: Electronic Arts, Lockeed Martin, Starwood Vacation Ownership
Hottest jobs: Senior mechanical engineer ($80,400), physician's assistant ($76,000), IT project manager ($75,200), construction project manager ($71,200), electrical engineer ($64,900)
Orlando once leaned heavily on Disney World and its service-sector spinoffs to prop up its economy, but these days it's pulling in life sciences, digital media, and health-care companies with affordable (or subsidized) land and tax breaks. Electronic Arts; Hollywood animation firm House of Moves; and Burnham Institute, a top-rated cancer research center, are all expanding and adding jobs here. Despite the housing slump, such diversification will help Orlando crank out 72,600 new jobs this year and next.
Most of the hiring will still come from the region's tourism backbone. But Orlando will also post higher growth in professional-services jobs--everything from office managers to advertising account executives--than any other city on our list. The high-wage, white-collar category is projected to balloon by about 15 percent. The reason: Orlando's population is expected to expand by 150,000 by decade's end.
Sources: Conference Board, Global Insight, Moody's Economy.com, PayScale, and Radford Surveys & Consulting.
