For those of us that travel too much, we understand that the single critical need when on the road is Internet connectivity. Now imagine you are one of the people that are technically on the road 100 percent of the time as a freelancer or telecommuter.
Am reading a study and writing on the rankings of The Best Cities for Freelancers and Telecommuters — as I sit with my laptop not in the office writing another blog. This topic strikes me as so appropriate that the irony is humorous. Regardless where I am, I typically start at 4 in the morning. No Internet, no productivity. Many days for my first four hours, even when in Houston, I am essentially a telecommuter.
An estimated 37 percent of workers telecommuted remotely in 2015 (at least at some time), up from 9 percent a few decades ago. Now consider those that do telecommute 100 percent of the time. Their needs are beyond Internet connectivity spreading into lifestyle amenities and economic factors. If you can live anyplace, why not live where the lifestyle is most affordable and desirable?
So how do you find the best places for telecommuters and freelances? To address this, Realtor.com and a freelancer put together a set of metrics after analyzing the top 100 metros. Following are the metrics used in the rankings:
- Median Home Price – Realtor.com
- Median One-Bedroom Rental Price — HUD
- State and Local Taxes – Tax Foundation
- Individual Health Plan Costs – Kaiser Family Foundation
- Cost of High-Bandwidth Internet Connections – BroadbandNow.com
- Walkability – WalkScore.com
- Per Capita Number of Coffee Shops With Free Wi-Fi – Yelp.com
- Per Capita Number of Gyms – Yelp.com
- Per Capita Number of Bars Open at 3 p.m. — Yelp.com
So where are the best places according to these metrics? In addition to their metrics also added are the latest 12-months of job growth as of June 2016.
To read the article click http://www.realtor.com/news/trends/ten-cities-freelancers-telecommuters-want-to-live-in/?identityID=577d5c8652b7729cf2011c9d&MID=2016_0812_WeeklyNL&RID=4056478642&cid=eml-2016-0715-WeeklyNL-blog_1_freelancerscities-blogs_trends
Not all of these parameters sync with me as a too-frequent traveler—assuming that telecommuters and freelancers are kindred spirits. Have not drank coffee much at all since 1994. Walkability, after multiple knee surgeries is a moot point. Ditto gyms. But I do mow my own lawn. And I prefer as a traveler to have a plethora of local hole-in-the-wall restaurants rather than bars. If the restaurant exists in Houston then I am not going to eat there.
One line I truly appreciated from the author of this study (who has a B.S. in Mathematics from Yale) was the statement in interests, “….using numbers to tell stories.” To him I say well done. And I wished I had coined that phrase.
Using Numbers to Tell Stories.
Ted