Many factors go into determining what may be the best cities for job seekers to find employment. There are any number of measures – not least qualitative ones such as where friends and family members reside, and what kind of family safety net exists.

But there are other measures, too – factors that are a little easier to apply across all workers:

• How favorable is the local labor market to job seekers?
• What are salary levels after adjusting for cost-of-living factors?
• What is the “work-life” balance that the community offers?
• What are the prospects for job security and advancement opportunities?

Seeking to find clues as to which metro areas represent the best environments for job seekers, job posting website Indeed set about analyzing data gathered from respondents who live in the 50 largest metro areas on the Indeed review database.

Indeed’s research methodology is explained here. Its analysis began by posing the four questions above and applying a percentile score for each one based on the feedback it received, followed by additional analytical calculations to come up with a consolidated score for each of the 50 metro areas.

The resulting list shows a definite skew towards the south and west. In order of rank, here are the ten metro areas that scored as the most attractive places for job seekers:

#1. Miami, FL

#2. Orlando, FL

#3. Raleigh, NC

#4. Austin, TX

#5. Sacramento, CA

#6. San Jose, CA

#7. Jacksonville, FL

#8. San Diego, CA

#9. Houston, TX

#10. Memphis, TN

Not all metro areas ranked equally strongly across the four measurement categories. Overall leader Miami scored very highly for work-life-balance as well as job security and advancement, but its cost-of-living factors were decidedly less impressive.

“Where are cities in the Northeast and the Midwest?”, you might ask. Not only are they nowhere to be found in the Top 10, they aren’t in the second group of ten in Indeed’s ranking, either:

#11. Las Vegas, NV

#12. San Francisco, CA

#13. Riverside, CA

#14. Atlanta, GA

#15. Los Angeles, CA

#16. San Antonio, TX

#17. Seattle, WA

#18. Hartford, CT

#19. Charlotte, NC

#20. Tampa, FL

… except for one: Hartford (#18 on Indeed’s list).

Likely, the scarcity of Northeastern and Midwestern cities correlates with the loss of manufacturing jobs, which have typically been so important to those metro areas.  Many of these markets have struggled to become more diversified.

If there are similar characteristics between the top-scoring cities beside geography, it’s that they’re high-tech bastions, highly diversified economies or – very significantly – the seat of state government.

In fact, if you look at the Top 10 metro areas, three of them are state capital cities; in the next group, there are two more.  Not surprisingly, those cities were ranked higher than others for job security.  And salary levels compared to the cost of living in those areas were also quite lucrative.

So much for the adage that a government paycheck is low but the job security is high; it turns out, they both are.

For more details on the Indeed listing, how the ranking was derived, and individual scores by metro area for the four criteria shown above, click here.