One of the major factors influencing your decision to relocate, whether it's to Nashville, Tennessee or elsewhere, is the availability of jobs in your profession. You wouldn't want to try getting a job selling used woodworking machinery in a city completely disconnected from the forestry industry, and so on. To help you get a clearer idea of what jobs there are available in Nashville and what your chances are of finding lasting employment that will help you support your family, we've created this guide to economy and employment in Nashville.

Nashville is known internationally as the home of country music, and although the recording industry in Nashville is the second largest in the nation, health care actually has a larger economic impact on the area. There are 250 health care companies in the city making fire sleeves and treating patients. Other major industries that contribute to the city's economy include automotive manufacturing, insurance, and publishing. Your best bet, if you want to find employment easily in Nashville, is to train for one of these industries.

The most common industries for men to find jobs in is construction at 12% of the workforce, meaning that you're a man looking for work in Nashville, you're more likely to find a job working with sheet lead than papers. Construction is followed by health care at 7% and professional and scientific services at 6%. This is tied with education at 6% and accommodation and food services, also at 6%. Other high ranking categories are administrative support and waste management at 5% and public administration (i.e. government jobs) at 5% as well.

For women, the figures are different. Statistically females tend to favor administrative work rather than heavy industry, so the top job sector for women is health care. 18% of the women employed in Nashville work in this industry. A further 12% are employed in the field of education and 9% work in accommodation and food services. Finance and insurance employs about 6% of women, managing commodity funds and the like, and 5% are in public administration. Scientific and technical services and administrative support each account for 5% as well.

The largest employers in Nashville are the state government, Vanderbuilt University and Medical Center, the public school system, and the US government. Other high rankers are Saint Thomas Health Services, Dell, Nissan, and Wal-Mart. If you're among the 9.7% of the population that is unemployed, you might consider taking out a private commercial mortgage and starting your own small business. Nashville's unemployment rate compares favorably with the state of Tennessee's unemployment rate, which is about 10.7%, but slightly outstrips the national unemployment rate, which sits at about 9.6% in 2010.