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SALT LAKE CITY — Three of the top four best cities for career opportunities are located here in Utah, according to a study done by SmartAsset.
Provo, Logan and Salt Lake City top the list of the nation's 355 biggest metro areas SmartAsset looked at as they considered metrics like the growth rate in the number of jobs, early- to late-career wage growth and the number of career and vocational counselors in each area.
SmartAsset called Provo "a leading center for technology companies and tech development," and highlighted software company Novell, which is headquartered in Provo.
It also mentioned that Provo has three "unicorn" tech startups, or "privately funded businesses that have an estimated valuation of over $1 billion." Those startups are Qualtrics, Vivint and Ancestry.com, Asees Singh, director of public relations for SmartAsset told KSL.com in an email.
The region's healthcare industry and two universities also earned praise. The number of jobs in the Provo metro area rose 6.9 percent from 2014 to 2015. The area has the highest job growth rate of any other metro in the country, according to SmartAsset.
The study recognized Logan — the second best city for career opportunities — as having an unemployment rate of 3.3 percent and median annual housing costs of $8,244, which is far below the country's average in metro areas.
From June 2014 to June 2015, Salt Lake City — No. 4 on the list — added 29,000 jobs, making it the city with the 11th highest job growth rate at 4.4 percent.
Also in the top 10 best cities for career opportunities are Fargo, North Dakota (third); Dayton, Ohio; Austin, Texas; Toledo, Ohio; Burlington, Vermont; Madison, Wisconsin and Buffalo, New York. Ogden, Utah came in 13th.
To rank each metro, SmartAsset looked at the unemployment rate, the rate of employment growth, the median income, the median annual housing costs, the number of educational and vocational counselors and postsecondary teachers in each area and early- to late-career wage growth, according to its website.
It then averaged those rankings and gave 50 percent of the weight to growth potential metric and vocational counselors and postsecondary teachers. Lastly, it assigned each city a score from zero to 100 based on its average ranking.
According to its website, SmartAsset obtained the data of the unemployment rate, the rate of employment growth, the median income and the number of vocational counselors and postsecondary teachers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It got the data for the median annual housing costs and early-career to late-career income growth from the U.S. Census Bureau.
