No N.J. Towns Make U.S. News' Ranking Of '100 Best Places To Live'

If there's a best-of-anything list, chances are a New Jersey town is on it.

This is the state with towns that routinely make the lists that identify anything "best" - whether it's schools, safety, drinking water or anything else that raises your quality of life.

This year, however, U.S. News & World Report couldn't find it in its heart to name one single New Jersey community or metro area among its "100 Best Places To Live."

The publication — certainly one of the more reputable outlets among the dearth of those who have recently begun trying to rank anything and everything — took a stab at it for the second year in a row, using highly what it considers reliable data to arrive at its conclusions.

Six Pennsylvania towns made the list, by contrast: The highest-ranking Pennsylvania city on the list was Harrisburg, coming in 34th. Lancaster was ranked 41st, Pittsburgh was 58th, Philadelphia was 77th, Allentown was 79th and Scranton was 86th.

The top ranked city overall was Austin, Texas.

Money magazine, by contrast, identified four New Jersey communities last year among the best places to live in the country.

Read more: 4 N.J. Towns Make 2016 Money Magazine List of Best Places to Live

The U.S. News report looked at the 100 most populous metro areas in the country and graded them based on several factors, including the job market and affordability. Those categories were given different weights and were combined to come up with the final ranking.

Here were the top 10 places to live in the country, according to the rankings:

1. Austin, TX

2. Denver, CO

3. San Jose, CA

4. Washington, DC

5. Fayetteville, AR

6. Seattle, WA

7. Raleigh & Durham, NC

8. Boston, MA

9. Des Moines, IA

10. Salt Lake City, UT

Click here to see this year's full list.

Here are the categories used to come up with the rankings, along with how heavily they were weighted:

• Job Market Index (20 percent): A look at both the 12-month moving unemployment rate and the median salary, weighted equally.
• Value Index (25 percent): A comparison of the median annual household income against the blended annual cost of living, which looks at utility costs and taxes compared against mortgage rates and monthly rents.
• Quality of Life Index (30 percent): A look at how satisfied residents are with their daily lives, which takes into account crime rates, quality and availability of health care, quality of education, well-being and the commuter index.
• Desirability Index (15 percent): Based off of a nationwide Google Consumer Survey that asked people which city they would like to live in.
• Net Migration (10 percent): Looking at how fast people are moving in or out of major metro areas.

You can read the full methodology here.

See the full rankings from U.S. News & World Report here.

With reporting by Marc Torrence and Kara Seymour

Patch file photo of Montclair