An increasing number of college graduates applied for jobs in New York City and Washington, D.C., despite their high unemployment rates.

The campus recruitment app Handshake’s survey results found that 9.1% of its users applied for jobs in New York, which was the largest increase in applications from last year at 1.35 percentage points. Second were applicants pining for Washington at 3%, which was an increase of over 0.5 percentage points from last year.

However, in March, when this survey was taken, New York reported an unemployment rate of 4.3%, and Washington reported 5.2%, both higher than the nationwide rate of 3.8% at the time. In a state-by-state ranking, New York had the 40th-lowest rate, and the District of Columbia was 50th.

This comes as more applicants were interested in government roles, accounting for 7.4% of all job applications from 2024 graduates during this presidential election year. The class of 2023 sent 5.5% of its applications to the government.

Meanwhile, the remaining five cities that reported increases in job applications from last year are all cities run by Republican politicians. Rep. Randy Weber’s (R-TX) Texas City increased by 0.2 percentage points, and Salt Lake City, which is split up into each of Utah’s four congressional districts all represented by Republicans, increased by 0.16 percentage points. Rep. Mike Simpson’s (R-ID) Boise experienced an increase of 0.15 percentage points, which tied with Rep. Jen Kiggans’s (R-VA) Virginia Beach and Rep. David Schweikert’s (R-AZ) Scottsdale.

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The economy added 315,000 jobs in March, followed by 175,000 in April. There were 231,000 applicants for unemployment benefits during the last week of April into May.

Handshake surveyed 2,687 students graduating with bachelor’s degrees from 616 institutions.