Has the pandemic-era migration of tech talent to new US cities actually held up?

ChatGPT

Short answer: partly, but not in the way the pandemic narrative predicted. The “tech exodus” from Silicon Valley and other expensive hubs turned into a lasting redistribution of some talent and startups, but it did not become a wholesale relocation of the tech industry to cheaper cities.

WIRED

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What actually happened

1. A lot of people moved — especially remote workers — but the wave peaked early.

In 2020–2022, places such as Austin, Miami, Nashville, Raleigh, Tampa, Denver, and Phoenix gained highly educated workers. Austin was one of the clearest examples: it attracted a large influx of remote workers from places like the Bay Area and New York.

CBRE

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But by 2023, the pace of movement had slowed. Some of the biggest pandemic winners saw weaker inflows, while migration patterns began to normalize.

CBRE

2. The people moved more than the jobs did.

The biggest misconception was that remote work would permanently break the link between tech jobs and traditional hubs. In reality, companies and high-value jobs remained concentrated in places like the Bay Area, Seattle, New York, Boston, and other established ecosystems.

WIRED

The reason is that tech clusters are not just offices. They include:

venture capital networks

experienced engineering talent

universities

founders and investors

recruiting pipelines

informal knowledge sharing

Those advantages proved harder to replicate than many expected.

WIRED

3. Some “new hubs” did become more legitimate.

The pandemic…

Trimmed here; the full answer is in the viewer.

Named: San Francisco Bay Area, Austin, Miami, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, Tampa, Denver, Phoenix, New York City, Seattle, Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, Salt Lake City

Sources cited: wired.com, cbre.com, businessinsider.com, microsoft.com

Claude

Short answer: no — much of it has reversed, especially at the high end.

What happened in 2021-22: Remote work sent tech workers pouring into Sun Belt and secondary cities — Miami saw a 30% net increase in software and IT workers, with Orlando, San Diego, and San Antonio also growing rapidly. Austin, Denver, and Boise became the poster children of the "tech exodus" narrative.

Technical.ly

What's happened since: The AI boom has pulled talent back toward the old hubs, hard.

San Francisco and New York now employ 65% of AI engineers at VC-backed startups, reversing the pandemic-era dispersal — that's SignalFire's 2025 data, and it's a striking reconsolidation.

Peony

CBRE's 2026 tech talent scorecard still ranks San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto, New York, Austin, and Washington D.C. as the top markets, unchanged from the prior year. The Bay Area still draws 80% of U.S. AI venture funding since 2020 and holds one-sixth of all U.S. AI-specialty talent.

Inc

Within the "big two," there's been a reshuffle rather than dispersal: New York has actually overtaken San Francisco in raw tech worker headcount for the first time — 394,300 versus 375,730 — with NYC gaining about 30,600 workers since 2022 while SF lost nearly 24,000. But that's a hub-to-hub shift, not hub-to-Sun-Belt.

Gizmodo

Growth has genuinely slowed almost everywhere: total U.S. tech employment grew just 1.8% in 2025, versus a 7.3% peak growth rate in 2022, so there's less overall movement to redistribute in the first…

Trimmed here; the full answer is in the viewer.

Named: Miami, San Diego, Austin, Denver, San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Seattle, Washington, D.C.

Sources cited: technical.ly, peony.ink, inc.com, gizmodo.com

Gemini

The short answer is yes, but it transformed into a permanent baseline rather than a continuous exodus.

The initial wave of high-velocity relocation seen between 2020 and 2022 cooled down, but the tech talent that shifted to secondary and tertiary hubs has largely stayed put. Instead of returning to traditional coastal strongholds, talent distribution across the U.S. has settled into a new "hybrid geography."

Key Patterns Defining the Current Landscape

Emerging Hubs Maintained Growth: Cities that saw massive migration during the pandemic—such as Austin, Raleigh-Durham, Salt Lake City, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Atlanta—have established themselves as permanent tech centers (KORE1). Rather than seeing a post-pandemic reversal, secondary markets like Raleigh, Nashville, and Salt Lake City continue to outpace national averages in tech job creation (KORE1).

Austin & Washington D.C. Solidified Tier-1 Status: Fast-growing destinations during the height of the move have entrenched their gains. Austin consistently ranks alongside traditional giants like San Francisco, Seattle, and New York in core tech talent rankings, while Washington D.C. became a primary beneficiary for software engineering relocations from Silicon Valley (CBRE, Karat).

The "Return to Office" Effect Hit a Ceiling: Mandates from tech majors forced some employees back to major corporate offices, but many tech workers negotiated remote or hybrid status to remain in lower-cost markets (TECNA). Furthermore, national…

Trimmed here; the full answer is in the viewer.

Named: Austin, Raleigh-Durham, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Atlanta, Nashville, Washington, D.C., San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, New York City, Huntsville, Tampa

Sources cited: kore1.com, cbre.com, karat.com, tecnatechnologycouncilsofnorthamericaca.growthzoneapp.com

Perplexity

Mostly no—at least not as a wholesale remaking of U.S. tech geography. Pandemic-era moves did broaden the map somewhat and gave several Sun Belt and secondary metros lasting momentum, but the strongest evidence indicates that migration from the traditional hubs slowed after the initial shock, while major hubs retained—and in some cases regained—their pull on young tech workers.

cbre

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What held up

Some destinations did establish more substantial tech talent bases:

Austin was the clearest winner in CBRE’s post-pandemic analysis, with its tech talent pool up 15%; Seattle rose 11.5%.

connectcre

Other metros—including Dallas–Fort Worth, Charlotte, Tampa, Orlando, and Houston—were still seeing increased in-migration in the year ending February 2023.

cbre

The pandemic also appeared to accelerate tech-job growth in a wider set of midsize locations and college/high-amenity cities. Brookings found that employment growth slowed in many superstar markets in 2020 while it accelerated across many smaller places.

brookings

So the durable change is not “tech left the coasts.” It is that more cities now have meaningful pools of remote-capable workers, more distributed company footprints, and greater capacity to compete for startups and technical hiring.

What faded

The more dramatic narrative—an enduring flight from San Francisco, New York, Seattle, and other expensive centers—has not held up well.

CBRE found that pandemic out-migration from high-cost large metros was relatively…

Trimmed here; the full answer is in the viewer.

Named: Austin, Seattle, Dallas, Charlotte, Tampa, Houston, San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Nashville, Denver, Phoenix, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C.

Sources cited: connectcre.com, cbre.com, brookings.edu