Now hiring sign at McDonald’s location in Sunny Isles Beach, FL – Courtesy: Shutterstock by Kristi Blokhin
The economy is trending downward in the most advantageous manner.
The coastal Southeast and the Rockies are seeing significant economic growth, with an increase in the availability of well-paying jobs and reasonably priced homes. And with a burgeoning population, the South has become a significant economic powerhouse in the United States.
According to recent data, hiring is already increasing in those new US hubs, displacing conventional coast-based job-driving mainstays.
According to a Gusto research of over 30,000 organizations on its platform, jobs are moving from the coastlines of California and the Northeast to small- and medium-sized communities across the country as well as large cities in Florida and Texas. The percentage of hiring at small and medium-sized firms between January 2018 and December 2023 was examined using data.
Thousands of people were forced to relocate to locations with cheaper living costs while working remotely due to the epidemic in large coastal cities, which have historically had high hiring shares, especially for white-collar workers. Prior to March 2020, big coastal cities accounted for 35% of hiring; today, this figure is closer to 29 percent. Reductions in hiring in Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York City were the main causes of this.
San Francisco, for example, lost 2.7 percentage points of its hiring share between mid-2022 and mid-2023 and pre-Covid. Census population estimates analyzed by the 2023 Economic Innovation Group show that San Francisco saw an almost 8 percent population reduction between 2020 and 2022, while San Jose saw losses of more than 4 percent.
The only typical coastal economic hub that Gusto examined that saw an increase in hiring share between 2018 and 2023 was Washington, DC; this development may have been caused by an increase in employment of government employees who work in person. According to recent job estimates, one of the industries with the fastest hiring growth is government.
Cities in Texas and Florida, meanwhile, seem to be hiring like crazy. San Antonio’s hiring share changed by 23.1 percent, while Orlando’s witnessed a 30.6 percent shift.
Although hiring shares stagnated from mid-2022 to 2023, Miami and Austin, which both drew thousands of remote workers in industries like IT, saw moderate hiring boosts in the first two years of the epidemic.
The hiring trends provide more evidence of the extent to which the epidemic altered the economic landscape of the United States. 2020’s distinct financial conditions—mortgage interest rates plummeted, Americans could work remotely—created a frenzy for property buying and their own version of pandemic boomtowns. Workers fled the coastal cities they had previously been forced to live in and migrated to states like Florida and Texas, where housing was less expensive and the climate more bearable. That has now caused a change in the hiring patterns in certain areas.
In a similar vein, the post-pandemic reconfiguration has brought smaller cities that had previously been hidden in the shadow of larger urban hubs to the forefront. Places like Boise and St. Louis experienced hiring booms of their own and have also had to deal with a flood of immigrants. And it’s possible that those movers want to settle down: Finding the right partner has become more important as the Midwest’s dating landscape has changed due to an increase of pandemic movers.
“We’re enrolling folks and are rather busy. Courtney Quinlan, the CEO of Midwest Matchmaking and matchmaker, recently told Business Insider that she works seven days a week. “I never get a day off,” she continued. And I adore it.”
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Born and raised in South Florida, Krystal is a recent graduate from the University of Miami with professional writing experience at the collegiate and national news outlet levels. She’s a foodie who loves all things travel, the beach, & visiting new places throughout Florida.