A job scheduler may schedule concurrent distributed jobs in a computer cluster by assigning tasks from the running jobs to compute nodes while balancing fairness with efficiency. Determining which tasks to assign to the compute nodes may be performed using a network flow graph. The weights on at least some of the edges of the graph encode data locality, and the capacities provide constraints that ensure fairness. A min-cost flow technique may be used to perform an assignment of the tasks represented by the network flow graph. Thus, online task scheduling with locality may be mapped onto a network flow graph, which in turn may be used to determine a scheduling assignment using min-cost flow techniques. The costs may encode data locality, fairness, and starvation-freedom.