Here Are the 20 Best Cities to Make Bank in Over Winter Break

The holiday season brings with it many splendid things: tacky light displays upsetting fancy neighborhoods, kid freak-outs on Santa’s lap and — more importantly — excellent potential for making a boatload of money.

So, you’re coming home from college and you don’t know what to do? How would it sound if you, say… Made. Some. MONEY? It’s a whole lot better than sitting on Mom and Dad’s couch, listening to yet another lecture about how your generation is on their phone way too much.

For the second year in a row, we put together a list of the top 20 cities where college-aged job seekers will have the best chance of getting hired. We also give you an estimate of how much you could expect to make if you tried:

• Babysitting
• Pet Sitting
• Home Organizing
• Running Errands
• Tutoring
• Senior Transportation/Driving
   

Where Do You Have the Best Chance of Getting Hired?

Our first step was to figure out where college-aged job applicants had the greatest likelihood of getting hired during winter break last year for the job types listed above. We calculated the total number of jobs available per applicant in each metro area, and then created an “Ease of Finding a Job Score.” We used this score to rank each city along a scale of 0-100 (with 0 being the least number of jobs compared to number of applicants, and 100 being the most).

And voilà: We found the top 20 cities where you have the greatest chance of getting hired! Here they are (and fingers crossed that yours is on this list!):

What Can You Do to Earn Big?

Our next step was to figure out how much money college kids could make in each city for different types of care jobs. To do this, we found the average hourly rates for each job type in each of the ten highest-ranking cities. We determined that you can get in about 80 hours of work during an average college winter break, so we multiplied the hourly rates by 80 to determine the total amount of money a job seeker could make in each category.

Although babysitting is usually one of the first options people turn to when they want to make some extra cash, our data show that it’s actually not the most lucrative winter break job. In fact, it turns out that college-aged babysitters tended to not make as much as pet sitters, tutors, errand runners, or senior transportation drivers.

Take the top city, Portland, for example. There, babysitters who work for a total of 80 hours over the whole break could end up bringing home about $1,111. By comparison, pet sitters could end up earning $1,686; home organizers, $1,230; errand runners, $1,280; tutors, $1,470; and senior care drivers, $1,400.

Think about it: How awesome would it be to bring that kind of cash back to school with you?

Here’s how much money you could make in the top 10 cities over break for each type of job, based on 80 hours of work:

How You Can Use Care.com to Make Bank This Break

Whether your city’s on this list or not, there are ALWAYS opportunities for you to make some extra money. Here’s how you can use Care.com to make that happen:

1) Create a Profile on Care.com

Make sure your location is set to where you’ll be over winter break, whether it’s home or someplace else. (Just be sure to change your location back to your school’s area when you return for spring semester!) Also make sure that you add a picture and talk about your love for a particular care job, such as tutoring or pet sitting.

2) Create Profiles for All of Your Care Interests

If you want to tutor, talk about how you breezed through your latest Calculus class. If you want to babysit, discuss your ability to handle particular age groups. Make sure you list any strengths you have that could really make you stand out as a candidate. 

3) Update Your Availability

This is crucial. If you say on your profile that you can work Fridays, then make sure you stick to that as much as you can. Of course, things will inevitably pop up that will mess with your schedule. And, if they do, just make sure that’s made clear on your profile, and to any families with whom you’re already communicating. It’s a huge turnoff to employers when they try to book you for a day you say you’re free, and then find out you’re not.

4) Respond

When a job interests you, apply! And if someone starts up a conversation, get back to them ASAP. The best way to get hired is to be professional — and responsive.

Methodology

This report is based on Care.com’s proprietary data, collected between December 15, 2016, and January 15, 2017. The city rankings compare how likely an applicant is to get a job in each metro area for any of the following job categories: B

abysitting, pet sitting, home organization, errand running, tutoring and senior transportation. To

 create this metric, we calculated the number of jobs available per applicant in each metro area during that time period, and then listed them in rank order from highest to lowest. The top 20 cities on this list

had the most jobs compared to the number of people applying, so they were the cities where applicants had the best chance of finding work over winter break.

Based on this list, we then found the average hourly rates for each job type in each of the ten highest-ranking cities, and multiplied those rates by 80 to determine the total amount of money a job seeker could make in each category.

Want to check out more of our studies? Feel free to peruse this list:

• The 20 Most Family-Friendly Cities for Halloween in 2016
• The 10 Best Cities in America to Raise the Next Rock Star
• The Best — and Worst — States for Child Care
• Best in Style: These 10 Cities Have the Best-Groomed Dogs
• Dads Are Getting More Involved on Valentine’s Day — Here’s How
• Grab Your Pup’s Leash: These Are the Best U.S. Cities for Walking Your Dog
• How Child Care Could Swing the Election
• How Much Do the Holidays Cost?
• Think You’re a Neat Freak? Here’s Where People Pay the Most for Housekeeping
• Want a New You in the New Year? Here’s Where You’re Most Likely to Make That Happen in 2017
• Want to Babysit on Valentine’s Day? These Are the Cities Where You Could Make Bank