Top 10 Best Cities for Remote Workers

By Kenyon Gerbrandt @ Shutterstock.com

The Wall Street Journal has released a ranking of its top cities for remote workers. Many of these cities are low-cost towns in red states, waiting for refugees from the “Escape States” to show up and fill their reserves of reasonably priced housing.

1. Springfield, MO
2. Joplin, MO
3. Evansville, IN
4. Conway, AR
5. Lafayette, IN
6. Huntington, WV
7. Kansas City, KS
8. St. Louis, MO
9. Wichita, KS
10. Fort Wayne, IN

You can see heavy representation in the WSJ ranking for cities in Missouri, Kansas, and Indiana. The Journal explains that these cities will give remote workers a life they can’t enjoy in more expensive coastal cities.

Fully remote workers make up about 13% of working Americans, or about 25 million individuals, according to Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom. The large majority of them are call-center employees, or do work such as data entry or information-technology support. In other words, they aren’t work-from-anywhere jet-setters with high salaries.

“Somewhere with cheap housing, low crime and good schools within the U.S. will be a huge magnet for these folks, because if you’re making $74,000 a year, you can have a great family lifestyle, which is maybe harder to do in New York or San Francisco on that salary,” Prof. Bloom says.

Places, that is, such as Springfield, which is known as the Queen City of the Ozarks and possesses several of the top 10 factors. Among them: a relatively low cost of living; high-speed broadband; easy access to an airport that connects to large hubs; and a host of parks, restaurants and art venues.

Kenneth Soldink, a web developer for Academic Impressions, a Denver-based provider of professional development training for higher-education institutions, has worked remotely from Springfield since 2015. His wife grew up outside of Springfield and still had family in Springfield, so the two moved from Denver when she landed a job there. The rent on their three-bedroom, two-bathroom house is about half what it would cost in Denver, he says.

The lower cost of living lets the couple take weekend trips—“like going up to Kansas City and saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to go to a four-star restaurant every night for the weekend,’” Mr. Soldink says. Or going to Santa Fe, N.M., for a weeklong anniversary trip and buying art.

Action Line: Missouri and Indiana both place in Your Survival Guy’s Top 20 newly released Super States for 2023. Don’t miss a Super States release or news about my Super States. Click here to subscribe to my Survive & Thrive letter and to be one of the first to receive my latest updates.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West (RIP JB) and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com To sign up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, click here.

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