Huntsville, Alabama continues to amaze. The Huntsville area continually ranks as one of the top metros in the United States. And now, Huntsville can add another great thing about the metro. The website NerdWallet analyzed 381 metro areas to identify the regions that balance opportunity for tech workers with cost of living – and Huntsville came in at #2. Only the San Jose, CA area was better. So, what makes Huntsville so attractive? The key takeaways are:
- The top cities tend to be large population centers with big tech employers. Seven of the top 10 metro areas for tech jobs (and 15 of the top 20) had more than 500,000 residents. A few tech giants make repeated appearances in the list, like Google, Apple and IBM.
- Where the government sets up shop, tech jobs follow. Three metros in the top 10 had strong U.S. government presences. Two had major federal research facilities (Huntsville, Alabama, and California-Lexington Park, Maryland), and one was the seat of the U.S. government itself, the Washington, D.C., area.
- The top cities are pricey, but they offer high tech salaries. The median gross rents — a Census metric that includes monthly rent, utilities and fuels — for the top 10 metros averaged $1,340, significantly higher than the average median in our study, $882. Meanwhile, median tech salaries in the top 10 averaged $101,118 annually, compared with $75,707 for all 381 metros.
For the Huntsville Metro, the region has just over 63 tech-related employees per 1,000 jobs. However, what vaults it even higher in their analysis is its affordability. Huntsville has by far the lowest median gross rent in the top 10 metros at $785 a month. That’s No. 233 in their analysis of 381 places. Not only the Huntsville area has a lot of tech jobs for the geeks and nerds, the Huntsville Metro is extremely affordable! If you lived in Silicon Valley, rents would be moon high and houses sell for millions. You can find a decent house or a good apartment for a low price! The cost of living in the Huntsville Metro is low. And that is great!
Huntsville continues to attract tech and other good paying jobs, including that Toyota-Mazda plant. If you live in the high cost Silicon Valley / San Francisco Metro, and are wanting to have a good tech job with a low-cost of living, consider Huntsville!
