If you’re looking for a job, you might want to steer away from big cities. A new study finds that while the hottest job markets in the U.S. are spread out in five different states, they are all in mid-size cities.

                By                    Yaёl Bizouati-Kennedy

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In partnership with Moody’s Analytics, the new Wall Street Journal study assessed 300 metro areas, measuring five factors: the unemployment rate, labor-force participation rate, job growth, labor-force growth, and wage growth in 2021.

And what they found is that the best job markets are all in cities with a population under 2.3 million. According to the Wall Street Journal, they’re in states with fairly low-income taxes, or none at all, and their climates allow for outdoor activities all year round.

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So, which are they?

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And let’s not forget that Tesla opened a Gigafactory in Austin earlier this month. Oracle also moved its headquarters to the city in 2020.

Next on the list are Nashville, Tennessee; Raleigh, North Carolina; Salt Lake City and Jacksonville, Florida, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Larger cities remained at the bottom of the rankings this year, with New York taking 41st place, Chicago at 40th and Los Angeles at 26th, The Wall Street Journal adds.

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Another interesting finding of the survey is that California and the West Coast dominate the rankings in one area: the fastest-growing salaries. Of the 10 large cities with the fastest wage growth in 2021, six of them were on the West Coast: San Jose, California; San Francisco, Seattle, Fresno, California; San Diego and Los Angeles.

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