These Are the Best U.S. Cities for Jobs. (They May Surprise You) (BusinessWeek)

Don't overlook smaller cities in your job search

It's not just the salary or job security that makes a city preferable for your job search. Often, such things as housing affordability and job satisfaction are just as important. 

Online career community Glassdoor just released a report naming the top 25 cities for jobs based on what it believes are the three key factors in a city's appeal for job seekers: how easy it is to get a job, cost of living, and job satisfaction. It then created a job score determined by each city’s median pay for employees, median home value, job satisfaction rating, number of current job openings and population. Note that this report was based on a comparison of the 50 most populated U.S. metros, not every single city.

You might also notice that such big names as New York, San Francisco, and Chicago don't crack the top 10. Glassdoor's Chief Economist, Andrew Chamberlain, attributes this to some cities on the list benefiting from better cost-of-living situations and career outlooks. 

The cities that really stand out offer job seekers what they really want: a stable career that they’re happy with, and the feeling that they can “get ahead” and eventually own a home. We see this taking place in fast-growing, mid-sized tech magnets like Austin and Seattle, which have benefitted tremendously from the tech boom as an alternative to high-cost tech hubs such as San Francisco, Boston and New York City. 

Here are the top 10 cities and their job scores.

There may not be much of a difference in terms of overall score, but when you drill down to the different factors that Glassdoor analyzed, you get a far larger disparity. 

Take a look at the median base salary, for instance. The top city, San Jose, has a pay level more than twice as high as that of No. 10 Oklahoma City. 

Looking at job openings, Washington has more than five times as many as Louisville.

When you take population into account, there isn't as much of a disparity in terms of job openings per person. The nation's capital has about 6 million residents to Louisville's 1.5 million.

If you want to buy a home right away, you'll want to take a look at places such as Kansas City, Mo., or San Antonio, rather than at San Jose. 

Here are some of the other cities that make the top 25, which includes some of the bigger metro areas:  

• St. Louis
• San Francisco
• Dallas-Fort Worth
• Boston 
• Atlanta
• Chicago 
• Houston
• Richmond, Va.
• Nashville