Charlotte Leads The Way for Five-Year Job Growth In These Sectors

Charlotte is among the top cities for five-year job growth in the financial services, life sciences, and technology, media and telecom (TMT) sectors, according to a new report from Colliers.

The firm turns an eye toward emerging cities for growth in those sectors by focusing on labor pool size, median wage, talent density, and five-year jobs growth to rank cities across the US. Charlotte is a major standout, as is Tampa, which is in the top 10 cities for all three sectors.

Austin is in the top 10 cities for five-year jobs growth for financial services and TMT and Salt Lake City, Nashville, and Dallas are in the top 10 for financial services and life sciences. On the flip side, St. Louis and Pittsburgh are the slowest growing cities and are in the bottom ten for five-year jobs growth for all three sectors. In addition, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Omaha, and Houston are in the bottom 10 for 5-year jobs growth for TMT and life sciences.

When it comes to labor pool size, Los Angeles/Orange County and New York City are in the top five cities while Chicago, Dallas, Washington, and San Francisco/Oakland are in the top 10 for all three sectors. Orlando, Salt Lake City, and Jacksonville are all top ten cities for median wage average for all three sectors, while Denver and San Francisco/Oakland are in the top 10 for talent density for all three sectors.

Colliers predicts the TMT sector will grow by 667,600 new jobs by 2030 at a 13% growth rate across the industry.  Denver leads the sector, while emerging cities include Detroit, Columbus, Jacksonville, and Norfolk.

“Jacksonville, an uncommon city to make a top 20 Technology, Media, and Telecom list, has in fact recently become a surging tech location,” the report notes. ”There has been a rise of e-commerce and fintech companies opening locations in the Florida city – 13 e-commerce companies have announced opening locations here over the last five years. Jacksonville is also home to the headquarters of many leading tech firms (Black Knight, Inc., Newfold Digital, Coastal Cloud, Fanatics and Forcura) and emerging startups rounding it out as a desirable new location for tech companies.”

On the financial services side, Phoenix leads the way thanks to low median wages and high five-year jobs growth. Other “surprises” on the list include Cleveland, Kansas City, Columbus, Nashville, and Omaha, which “made the list due to mostly low median wage paired with either a high talent density average or high 5-year jobs growth,” according to the report.

As for life sciences, Salt Lake City is the #1 city, followed by Nashville. Other surprises on the list include Baltimore, Columbus, Birmingham and Cleveland.

“There are a handful of surprise cities on the top 20 Life Sciences city list that can be regarded as emerging cities in this industry,” the report states. “The main surprises are Nashville and Baltimore. These are two cities that are not normally thought of when it comes to this industry. However, both cities have high growth rates and talent density averages. When these are paired with lower-than-average median wage costs, they both can both be dubbed as emerging cities in the industry.”