Remote and Distributed Work Driving Growth Outside of Major Cities

Citylab's Talent May Be Shifting Away From Superstar Cities covers research showing that the fast-growing "superstar cities" - New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Washington, DC - may be slowing down. 

Taking their place in attracting talent are lower-cost cities and towns, mostly in the sunbelt. 

The data comes from EMSI's Talent Attraction Scorecard, which looks at six metrics by county: job growth, skilled job growth, net migration, annual openings for skilled workers (per capita), educational attainment growth (based on adults with associate degrees and above), and a broad measure of regional competitiveness.

In addition to finding talent is spreading out across the U.S., the study also found continued growth of remote workers - again, especially in lower-cost areas of the country. 

EMSI found about 7 million Americans report being full-time remote workers. This is about 4.7% of the workforce.  

As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), many Western cities have a much higher percentage of remote workers than the national average.

There are several drivers of the shift away from superstar cities.  Key quote from the article:

The big knowledge and tech hubs which once had such a stranglehold on attracting talent seem to be losing their allure. Many places around the country now have bundles of amenities—renovated old buildings, coffee shops and good restaurants, music venues, and not least of all, more affordable homes—that can compete with the biggest cities. In other words, the amenity gap between superstar cities and other places has closed, while the housing-price gap has widened.

Another driver is continued improvements in distributed work technologies. With the advancements of video conferencing and online collaboration tools, it's become much easier to interact with and manage remote workers.

We believe the trend towards distributed work will continue and even accelerate over the next 5 years.  The economics of moving to lower-cost areas of the country are simply too strong for this not to happen.    

from Small Business Labs https://ift.tt/2DxWwiy
via https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT