Nashville took the title of the strongest job market in the U.S.—reflecting a pattern of migration to southern states.
Key Details
- Nashville, Tennessee, topped the list, followed by Austin, Texas, Jacksonville, Florida, Dallas, Texas, Raleigh, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, Orlando, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Miami, Florida.
- Orlando, Las Vegas, and New Orleans saw some of the largest growth from 2020 to 2022, while Salt Lake City, Denver, and Phoenix saw a decline while still remaining in the top 40 markets in the country.
- To find the hottest job markets, Moody’s measured the unemployment rate, labor-force participation rate, employment levels, labor-force size, and wages to determine which cities held the strongest economies.
Why It’s Important
As we previously reported, southern states like Texas, Florida, and Tennessee have seen mass migration movements from states like New York, Illinois, and California, as hundreds of thousands of citizens seek affordable homes, less strict pandemic lockdown measures, and cultural hotspots.
The demand has turned cities like Nashville and Austin into highly competitive markets with tight housing markets. This has meant thousands of companies and startups have followed the jobs and moved headquarters to these cities, including large companies like Tesla and SpaceX, which have moved offices and factories to Texas.
The unfortunate side effect of this has become the tightening of affordable housing in cities like Nashville and Austin, with residents raising concerns about the rapid population growth and limited housing market, Fortune notes. With nearly 83,000 new residents competing for homes in 2022, home prices skyrocketed and only started lowering with the declining economy earlier this year.
The Wall Street Journal and Moody’s Analytics released its annual ranking of the top job markets in the U.S.’s 380 most notable metropolitan areas.
Notable Quote
“These are lower-cost areas, they are growing rapidly, and there’s an increasingly large critical mass of young, educated people. The affordability is really appealing to families as well,” Moody’s Analytics economist Adam Kamins tells The Wall Street Journal.
