What’s the best city for tech workers? According to personal-finance site SmartAsset, it’s Omaha, Nebraska. In order to arrive at that conclusion, the site combined data on tech employment and living expenses. Cities nearer the top of its list offer a low cost of living, high pay for tech workers, and an elevated ratio of workers in tech. Omaha’s cost of living, at 11.7 percent lower than the national average, gave it an advantage over other U.S. cities. Low unemployment helped, too. The average salary was $74,710, with a ratio of “tech wage” to average wage of 1.72. Second on the list was Huntsville, Alabama, which boasts a high percentage of tech workers thanks to local defense and aerospace firms. Coming in third was Springfield, Illinois, also with a low cost of living and large numbers of techies. Fourth was Fort Worth, Texas, and fifth was Rochester, Minnesota. (Readers of the monthly Dice Report will remember that Minnesota is also the fastest-growing tech state, with a tech workforce that grew 8.36 percent over the past six months.) The other cities on SmartAsset’s list included, in descending order:

• Lynchburg, VA
• Des Moines, IA
• Columbus, OH
• Houston, TX
• St. Louis, MO
• Colorado Springs, CO
• Cedar Rapids, IA
• Dallas, Texas
• Charlottesville, VA
• Waco, TX

Although San Francisco continues to dominate the imagination as the nation’s heart of tech, the extraordinarily high cost of living in the Bay Area has driven any number of tech pros (and tech companies) to establish themselves in cheaper places. In response, cities across the country have begun broadcasting their attractiveness to techies, in hopes of creating industry hubs.