The Brookings Institute released a Report in 2019 noting that 90% of the nation’s innovation sector employment growth in the last 15 years was generated in just five major coastal cities : Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose, California.
It is true that dozens of start ups are opening up across the country in cities in the rural South and Mid-West – enough so that metro areas across America have added tech jobs since 2010.
But even so, digital tech has continued to concentrate in a short list of major cities over the decade, rather than disperse outwards. As such, many metro areas are losing their shares of the overall tech sector even as they grow.
According to the Brookings Institute the upshot is sobering: “Winner take most” seems more the rule than the hoped for “rise of the rest”.
But with Coronavirus Pandemic these predictions are being questioned.
The “Wall Street Journal” reported that Tech staffers from the Bay Area are relocating across the country, bringing to their locales the woes and upsides that go with some of America’s highest paying jobs. Employers including Facebook, Twitter and Stripe are allowing their staff to work from wherever they want.
These changes wrought by the pandemic have also brought complications, including some companies asserting that living expenses are lower in remote locations than in Silicon Valley and salary adjustments should be made accordingly.
Tech staff also question whether they will be able to move employers as easily when working from remote locations without the networks and convenience of offices and dozens of potential Tech employers located in a 50 mile radius.
The jury is out on the long term accuracy of the Brookings Institute’s predictions, or whether the fall-out from the Coronavirus pandemic will create more diverse Tech hubs across the country.
A detailed breakdown can be found in the full report on the Brooking Institute’s site https://www.brookings.edu/research/growth-centers-how-to-spread-tech-innovation-across-america/ .
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-workers-take-to-the-mountains-bringing-silicon-valley-with-them-11604242802