Today’s Tech Hubs: Labor and Housing Dynamics in the Post-Pandemic Era
For years, tech companies, talent, and venture capital were concentrated on the coasts — a precedent the pandemic tipped, if not flipped. While VC dollars still overwhelmingly funnel into places like Silicon Valley, Brookings research shows tech jobs are finally spreading out — movement spurred by the availability of hybrid and remote work, private investment, and federal initiatives. Consequently, metros like Nashville, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix have attracted more transplants from coastal hubs — a shift that helps spur economic development but also puts pressure on housing costs and public services.
Last week, Brookings and Revolution teamed up for an event exploring macro trends shaping labor and housing markets at this moment of rapid growth, historic investment, and significant uncertainty. Catch insights and soundbites from three conversations covering the “new normal” that rising regions are both contending with and embracing.
The conversation: How a new generation of startup hubs can accelerate their entrepreneurial momentum
The takeaways:
- The three most important buckets for creating a winning startup ecosystem are talent, capital, and collaboration. Collaboration is the hardest, but arguably the most important.
- Dynamism creates vitality and job opportunities that are key to a city’s success. But growth can also come with gentrification, displacement, and pressure on public resources and housing.
- What separates entrepreneurial ecosystem potential from realized success is often risk tolerance. To start and scale the next industry-transforming startups, entrepreneurs need to feel empowered to take big shots, some of which they’ll miss.
The soundbite: “Revolutions happen in evolutionary ways, and more often than not, it takes more than a decade to lay the groundwork for an ‘overnight success.’”
The conversation: The state of real estate innovation and housing policy amid the geographic reshuffle
The takeaways:
- In cities (like Boise) that experienced a surge of in-migration, long-term resident wages largely haven’t kept up with housing price hikes.
- Housing affordability is a visceral issue for communities, and local decision-makers are struggling to keep up with the scale of the problem.
- Zoning impacts everything — collaboration, economic opportunity, climate, and long-term resilience. Proactive planning and policies are crucial to optimizing real estate usage and creating symbiosis.
- Tech moves fast, but real estate moves slow. The confluence of shifting work and travel habits and an expensive housing market has allowed companies like Placemakr to fill a gap in the market with more flexible, tech-enabled options.
The soundbite: “Every local problem is personal. But the solutions are personal too.” — Mayor Lauren McLean
The conversation: The new work normal: examining post-pandemic tech economy and labor market trends
The takeaways:
- Tech is de-clustering, private and public investment dynamics are shifting, and place-based industrial policy is having a moment.
- Colorado’s influx of migrants in the early 2010s helped shape its reputation as a research and startup incubator, offering a roadmap for states experiencing rapid growth today.
- As people move from coastal cities to the sunbelt, “super cities” have become part of a larger network of places with a shared ethos and sector focus. Think: New York and Miami, LA and Nashville, and San Francisco and Austin.
- The donut effect is real, and urban cores are tasked with figuring out how to become places of fun and connection beyond the office.
- Beneficiaries of the CHIPS & Science Act, like Franklin County, will have to work with neighboring communities to cater to a growing workforce while local infrastructure catches up.
- For a rising tide of independent workers, there’s a real struggle to do things like buy a house or take leave when society is built around the traditional W-2 career.
The soundbite: “We have to start taking the gig economy and gig workers seriously.” — Craig J. Lewis
Watch a full event:
