10 Best Cities for Freelancers

August 14, 2016 by Douglas A. McIntyre

Presumably most freelancers are low paid and do not get benefits from the companies they work for. The use of freelancers is an ideal way for employers to save money. That drives many freelancers to work from home, at the very least to save of cost of office rental

Realtor.com claims that 10 cities line up as better for freelancers, although the times that bars are open, and a lot of coffee shops with free Wi-Fi, which are part of the analysis, may be a stretch.

Realtor.com explains the circumstances of freelancers and telecommuters, and the situations, and some solutions:

Who needs to schlep to an office, anyway? The stale air, the staler doughnuts, the stalest meetings—and let’s not even talk about the little weasel who keeps stealing your pastrami sandwich from the office fridge. Why subject yourself to such abuse? It’s no wonder more and more Americans are saying no mas.

According to a recent Gallup Poll, 37% of Americans cut the cord and telecommuted remotely in 2015, up from a paltry 9% a couple of decades ago. And the ranks of fully independent freelancers are swelling even faster, thanks in part to the rise of such “gig economy” behemoths as Uber and TaskRabbit.

Modern technology (hello, high-speed internet, Google Hangouts, and Pokemon Go) helped make this paradigm shift possible and even pleasurable. But here’s the deal: When it comes to spending your workdays (and nights) untethered from an office, not all hometowns are created equal. Freelancers and telecommuters can get lonely. They get paunchy. They get ever so slightly stir-crazy. They have needs.

And their criteria:

    Median metro home prices, according to realtor.com
Median metro one-bedroom rental prices, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data
Costs of state and local taxes, according to the Tax Foundation
Cost of individual health care plans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation
Cost of high-bandwidth internet connections, according to BroadbandNow.com
Walkability, according to WalkScore.com
Number of coffee shops with free Wi-Fi per capita, according to Yelp
Number of gyms per capita, according to Yelp
Number of bars open at 3 p.m. per capita, according to Yelp (If you’re wondering why this entry is here, ask a freelancer.)

If low pay is indeed a usual circumstance for freelancers, low rent is good (although that ought to be attractive to anyone), low homes price for roughly the same reason. Bars, gyms and walking are a real stretch.

The cities:

  1. Las Vegas
  2. Salt City
  3. St. Louis
  4. Pittsburgh
  5. Atlanta
  6. Orlando
  7. Knoxville
  8. Cincinnati
  9. Minneapolis
  10. New Orleans

Temperature must not be an issue.

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