#Techies leave San Francisco and New York for Austin and Nashville

Tech workers are fleeing San Francisco and New York for cheaper cities, but Miami isn’t a big destination, according to new data.

Austin, Texas, saw the largest influx of tech workers during the pandemic, with a net 217 software and information technology workers moving to the city per 10,000 existing workers. Nashville clocked in second with 154.7 net techies per 10,000, followed by Charlotte, NC, with 145.8; Jacksonville, Fla., with 136; and Denver with 130.4. 

Other cities in the top 10 include Seattle, Tampa Bay, Las Vegas and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Miami, however, came in 11th, attracting an inflow of just 76.6 software and information technology company workers per 10,000 existing workers between May 2020 and April 2021, according to LinkedIn data.

That’s despite Miami’s popularity with the Wall Street crowd, as well as the fact that Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has tried to court CEOs like Elon Musk on Twitter while seeking to pay public workers’ salaries in bitcoin and lobbying the state to let the city invest public money in cryptocurrency. 

The brunt of the tech migration has been borne by San Francisco, which lost 80.5 tech workers per 10,000. Boston lost 54.4 and New York City lost 42.3. Chicago, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Washington, DC, also lost substantial numbers of tech workers.

It’s unclear, however, whether the transplanted techies will stay put after the pandemic. Some tech giants like Microsoft and Twitter have told many employees they can work from home forever, while Apple is spending billions of dollars expanding offices in smaller cities like Austin and Raleigh, NC.