Charleston, SC one of the 10 U.S. metros driving long-distance job seekers in latest study

How far would you move to pursue the next chapter of your career? For Asha Patel, who grew up in the greater New York City metro area, it seemed for years as if all the opportunities she could want were right there in her home region.

Then a recruiter reached out with a Florida opportunity in her field, health care management. The new role involved a substantial pay raise and some fast-track new responsibilities. She couldn’t say no.

Today, Patel calls the Tampa Bay region her home. She’s guiding value-based care strategies for a patient population of 200,000, and she’s enjoying the year-round sunshine. As Patel puts it, it’s exciting to be building a career in a region with “so much economic development.”

Overall, internal U.S. migration across state lines has been declining since the 1950s, according to Census Bureau data. We’ve become a more settled (and perhaps less adventurous) nation. But for people seeking bigger opportunities, that old restless spirit hasn’t vanished, according to a new analysis by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team.

As the chart above shows, people are willing to uproot in a big way to pursue new career opportunities in a variety of Sunbelt locations. 

On Florida’s west coast, LinkedIn data shows that Cape Coral, Fla., and nearby towns stood out in 2022 as the metro area with the greatest ability to attract new workers from distant locations. The median relocation journey of people starting new jobs in this southwestern, coastal part of Florida amounted to 592 miles. 

Florida’s west coast tends to attract people relocating from Michigan, Illinois and other parts of the Midwest, observes Suzanne Lesko, a Navy veteran who grew up in Pittsburgh. She recently moved to Naples, Fla., a few miles south of Cape Coral, where she does a wide range of advocacy and consulting work relevant to veterans’ affairs.

Three other Florida metros also rank in the U.S. top 10, in terms of attracting talent from far away. They are third-ranked North Port-Sarasota (median relocation distance of 478 miles), seventh-ranked Jacksonville (187 miles) and ninth-ranked Tampa Bay (165 miles). 

Colorado Springs ranks second (515 miles), and the remaining top-10 metros are spread across five Sunbelt states. They are fourth-ranked Charleston, S.C. (266 miles), fifth-ranked Las Vegas, Nev. (234 miles), sixth-ranked Nashville, Tenn. (203 miles), eighth-ranked Austin, Texas (180 miles) and 10th-ranked Charlotte, N.C. (114 miles). 

Other notable findings from this job-migration analysis are as follows:

Men migrate farther than women do. For 2022, men’s median migration was 148 miles, almost exactly double the 76 miles for women. This has intriguing implications for companies conducting nationwide talent searches: their candidate pool may end up skewing male if they don’t also look closely at local talent.

It’s easier to move when you’re younger. LinkedIn data shows that Gen Z workers (age 26 or younger) are migrating a median distance of 194 miles. Millennials (ages 27 to 42) post median migration journeys of 137 miles.

By contrast, median migration distances are less than 50 miles for both workers in Gen X (ages 43 to 58) and baby boomers (ages 59 to 77). LinkedIn data scientist Caroline Liongosari points out that if companies need very experienced talent for certain roles, that may call for being extra mindful of candidates’ current locations, “without expecting them to relocate easily.”

Highly educated workers move the farthest. In 2022, people with Ph.D.s, law degrees and similar graduate degrees (other than an MBA) migrated a median of 204 miles. By contrast, median migration for people with less than a bachelor’s degree was just 40 miles.

Each industry has its own migration pattern. Fields with the longest median migrations (90 miles or more) include technology, information and media, government administration, oil, gas and mining, and education. At the other end of the spectrum, median migration distances for financial services, real estate and equipment rental all are less than 30 miles.

Looking closely at those variances, high demand for tech and media expertise has created a single national marketplace for those skills for some time. As for government jobs, there’s likely to be substantial movement back and forth between federal roles in the Washington, D.C., metro and similar positions in state or local roles. 

Financial services may be a field where a lot of job movement involves finding a new position within known geographic hubs, particularly the New York City metro area. And the uniquely local nature of real estate probably means that people who know luxury rentals in Los Angeles, or light-industrial facilities in Chicago will want to keep putting that specific, hard-won expertise to work in any new role they take

Middle-distance moves are becoming rarer. LinkedIn data shows a bimodal tug since 2019, with more people either migrating less than 25 miles or more than 3,000 miles – a distance that reflects people coming to the United States from other countries.

What’s making middle-distance relocations more difficult? A detailed study by the International Monetary Fund suggests that unbearably high housing costs make people reluctant to uproot and head to a new metro, even if economic opportunities seem greater 

Methodology

Economic Graph researchers analyzed more than 3 million U.S. migrations a year from 2019 to 2022. A migration instance is defined as a member changing their location on their LinkedIn profile. Student migrations – right before enrollment, during enrollment, and right after graduation – are removed so that analysis focuses more accurately on workforce migration trends. Migration distances are estimated using the zip codes LinkedIn users add to their profiles.

LinkedIn data scientist Caroline Liongosari contributed to this article.

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