RALEIGH – If you live in the metro Raleigh area and want to find a job where you can work as a telecommuter then you are in the eighth best city across the US for that workforce trend. Durham is not far behind at No. 15.

Charlotte comes in at No. 12.

“About 8.6% of workers in Raleigh, North Carolina do not commute, the ninth-highest rate for this metric across all 100 cities in our study,” reports financial services site SmartAsset.

That’s an increase of 2.4 percent over the past five years, good for sixth spot among the top 10 cities in the study.

Some 5.6 percent of workers in Durham are telecommuters, up more than 1 percent in five years. More than 8 percent of Charlotte workers toil away outside the office.

Why telecommute? It can save money – and time.

“The average U.S. worker travels about 27.1 minutes to work and spends $2,600 annually on commuting costs,” says SmartAsset.

A combination of factors in the survey – not including Internet access but other factors such as places to log in (coffee shops, bars) – rank Raleigh ahead of its arch rival for tech projects and jobs – Austin, Texas.

Raleigh scored 83.21 on the index out of 100.

“[H]ousing costs as a percentage of earnings here are relatively low, ranking in the top third of the study. However, Raleigh may be a better city for employees intending to work directly from their house or apartment rather than a coffee shop or bar. It ranks in the bottom fourth of all 100 cities we considered for the metrics of coffee shop and bar density,” the study notes.

Raleigh workers on average spend 36.9 percent of their incomes on housing, the study adds.

Scottsdale, Ariz. topped the study with a perfect 100 score. More than 14 percent of the workforce there telecommutes.

Read the full study online.