This city has the most competition for a ‘highly paid’ job—it’s not New York or San Francisco

What qualifies as a high paying gig depends on the cost of living in your job market — and you may face stiffer competition depending on your location, too.

Job candidates hoping to inch closer to the six-figure salary mark will have the hardest time in inland cities like Salt Lake City, St. Louis and Denver, according to a new analysis from Career.io, a career management platform.

The site identified the cities with the highest rates of people applying for highly paid jobs, defined as double the local average wage, based on LinkedIn and Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The analysis considers in-person jobs in the 200 most populated U.S. cities, plus the five biggest cities in each state.

In Salt Lake City, a high-paying job at twice the local average wage is anything that pays $94,515 or more. However, openings with that salary threshold see an average of roughly 35 applicants per day.

The No. 10 most competitive city, New York, sees just about 10 applicants per day for every high-paying job with a salary of $114,774 or more.

Here are the cities with the toughest competition for highly paid jobs:

1. Salt Lake City, Utah: 34.9 daily applicants per job paying $94,515 or more
2. St. Louis, Missouri: 33.4 daily applicants per job paying $91,978 or more
3. Denver, Colorado: 31.9 daily applicants per job paying $109,202 or more
4. San Jose, California: 29.6 daily applicants per job paying $153,462 or more
5. Kansas City, Kansas: 27.4 daily applicants per job paying $92,810 or more
6. San Francisco, California: 24.1 daily applicants per job paying $131,040 or more
7. Santa Ana, California: 22.3 daily applicants per job paying $96,928 or more
8. Los Angeles, California: 21.8 daily applicants per job paying $96,928 or more
9. Jersey City, New Jersey: 21.2 daily applicants per job paying $114,774 or more
10. New York City, New York: 10.2 daily applicants per job paying $114,774 or more

Most of the high-paid and competitive jobs in these cities are C-suite and managerial roles, says Taylor Tomita, senior outreach…