Turmoil on Wall Street, with thousands of jobs being lost in the wake of the housing crisis, was blamed for New York's drop from first to fourth in the Forbes survey of upward mobility.

"Right now anything would be easier than New York," Richie Rivera, 30, a health insurance administrator from Brooklyn, told The New York Daily News. "A lot of people are losing jobs and trying to find work."

San Francisco leap-frogged over New York into the yuppie top spot thanks to a more diversified economy, followed by Boston with its booming technology sector. Also beating out New York was Houston, where record prices for oil are creating new jobs and more upward mobility in Texas, the Daily News said.

Fifth on the yuppie list was Minneapolis, where employers such as Target Corp. and a burgeoning downtown social scene are attracting young professionals. Forbes found the worst cities for yuppies were Tampa, Fla., Las Vegas and Miami.