Salt Lake City and Austin Ranked Best for Job Creation in U.S.

Salt Lake City, Utah, and Austin, Texas, topped the rankings for job creation across all U.S. cities in 2014, according to a poll by research-based consulting company Gallup. They are followed by San Francisco, whose Bay Area is home to tech giants like Apple, Google and Facebook, while another Texas city, Houston, and Orlando, Fla., round off the top five.

The nation’s financial powerhouse New York City, meanwhile, ranked dead last among the top 50 metro areas, joined by San Diego, Calif., and Hartford, Conn., in the bottom three.

The poll was done through a telephone survey of over 200,000 randomly selected participants across the country, who were divided into Metropolitan Statistical Areas that were then assigned a “Job Creation Index” score. Among the top 50, these scores ranged from 37 for Utah and Austin to 20 for Hartford, San Diego and New York.

While U.S. job creation on the whole has been improving since the 2009 recession, the trend among the cities with high job creation appears to be an increasing demand in the technology sector. Housing and construction jobs are also growing in the top two cities to meet the increasing demands placed on them by the work force, Gallup said.