Courtesy: SmartAsset

After the unfortunate incident involving the seven-layer bean dip at last night’s Super Bowl party, some of us may find ourselves at least temporarily single. The good news is my attorney says bean dip kills all traces of DNA, and a new study says Lawrence is one of the best cities in America to be single.

The financial website SmartAsset has ranked Lawrence as the eighth best city in America for being single. The website looked at a variety of Census numbers to come to its conclusion. Specifically, Lawrence scored well in the areas of:

• Low unemployment at 2.9 percent.

• Low median monthly rent at $685. The study noted reasonable rent rates are important since single people often don’t have anyone to split their housing costs with.

• Number of bars per 100,000 people at 32.8.

• Number of entertainment establishments — which includes bars but also things like movie theaters and bowling alleys — per 100,000 people at 40.2.

• Low marriage rate of 35 percent. For the purposes of this study, a lower marriage rate is better than a higher one because as the study’s author’s noted, “most single people agree with this: married people can be pretty boring.”

Make what you will of the ranking. Those are subjective things, and being the eighth best community for singles probably won’t make us a boom town, but also probably won’t hurt either. What I generally find more interesting about these rankings is that they provide us a chance to look at some data and see how we compare with other communities.

In the case of this study, SmartAsset looked at 582 cities from across the country, but the report shared the data only for the top 25 ranked communities. Here’s a look at some things I’ve culled from it:

• All the cities had low unemployment rates, but Lawrence’s was particularly low. At 2.9 percent, Lawrence had the fourth lowest unemployment rate among the top 25. Only Fargo, N.D., Sioux Falls, S.D. and Iowa City had lower unemployment rates.

• Rent prices vary a lot from community to community, but Lawrence’s are a bit on the high side. Of the top 25 communities, the median rent price was $621 per month. In Lawrence, it was $685. Some average rents topped $900 per month. The one community that stood out to me was Iowa City, which is where Lawrence’s new city manager comes from. (If you didn’t read J-W reporter Nikki Wentling’s excellent piece on Iowa City and our incoming manager, you should do so here.) Iowa City’s median monthly rent is $819, according to the study. That is a big number, but sometimes rents are high in places where incomes are high. But that doesn’t appear to be the case in Iowa City. The median income in Iowa City is actually less than Lawrence’s — $46,929 for Lawrence compared to $42,119. It does look like housing affordability is an issue that incoming City Manager Tom Markus deals with in Iowa City. According to the Census Bureau, about 57 percent of all renters in Iowa City pay more than 35 percent of their income for housing costs. That compares to 47 percent who find themselves in that situation in Lawrence.

• As a college community, we think we have a lot of bars, but we’re really not that much out of the ordinary. Out of the top 25 communities, we ranked No. 12 in terms of the number of bars per capita. We have 32.8 bars per 100,000 people. The top community in that category was Oshkosh, Wisc., at 58.8 per 100,000. The lowest was Kalamazoo, Mich., at 12.5.

But enough with all these numbers. I’m sure all you single folks are waiting to find out where you need to pack your bags for. The best city for single people, according to SmartAsset, is Missoula, Mont., which makes sense. Once you fill up your apartment with all the necessary moose decor, there isn’t much room for another occupant. You can see the full list of the top 25 below.