Look at the chart above, which shows the top 15 cities to which tech workers in the U.S. have been migrating for the past 12 months. There’s only one state that appears four times, which makes for almost one-third of the list: Florida.
Does the headline of the Bloomberg article from which I took (and improved) the chart mention this fact?
It most certainly does not. In fact, the title of the article is Austin Is Biggest Winner From Tech Migration, LinkedIn Data Show.
To be fair, Florida gets its due, but it’s not until halfway into the article…
The Covid-19 pandemic upended — at least temporarily — the idea that technology workers need to cluster around high-rent San Francisco or that finance workers need to do so in pricey New York. It also reinforced existing growth trends in smaller and relatively affordable markets, including Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida.
Lately, another Florida market — the Miami area, which is neither cheap nor second-tier — tends to grab most of the attention. It has been at the center of a buzzy social media campaign to lure tech workers. Even though Mayor Francis Suarez’s move-to-Miami campaign on social media didn’t begin in earnest until early December, the city was No. 11 by net migration rate.
…but I still think that Bloomberg got distracted by Austin’s long-time standing as a technology center and missed the real story:
Florida is taking its place as one of the new centers of tech.
Recommended reading
- Jaxnap.com — Jacksonville: A Growing Technology Capital
- Tampa Magazine — The Latest on Tampa’s Tech Scene: From autonomous vehicles to cyber security, Tampa could be the next tech town to watch
- Inc. — Miami’s Tech Startup Scene Gets Hotter: Entrepreneurs and stakeholders extol the advantages of this growing startup ecosystem–and explore what the model for its future should be.
- Orlando Business Journal — Silicon Valley entrepreneur: Orlando tech scene has all the Ingredients to be great