Traditionally, tech jobs have been clustered around the two coasts, with a special emphasis on SIlicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle and New York. But now, the tech scene is migrating to smaller cities with higher quality of life or vibrant college towns, according to a March 8 Brookings Institute report.
The rise of remote work helped free up the possibilities for locations of workers in the tech industry. During the pandemic, a range of companies moved their headquarters away from the so called "superstar" tech cities, into other metropolitan areas. Oracle announced it would move its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Texas, and Tesla also followed suit.
The Brookings Institute analyzed employment, job postings and new start-ups to understand how the tech industry is changing geographically using the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas and tech communities of 1,000 or more employees. Here's what they found:
- Between 2015 and 2019, eight "superstar" cities of San Francisco, San Jose (Calif.) Austin (Texas), Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C., made up half of the nation's tech job creation.
- During the pandemic, tech job growth slowed in the "superstar" cities and rising metropolitan areas.
- In other large metropolitan cities, the tech scene grew in 2020, including Virginia Beach, Va., Ogden, Utah, and Cincinnati.
- Small towns boasting high quality of life boosted their tech growth, with Santa Barbara, Calif., Barnstable, Mass., and Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss., all seeing a 6 percent or greater surge in tech employment.
"The question now is whether the recent dispersed tech growth forecasts a major shift, or is instead a temporary disruption," reads the report.