Job growth, which has been seen as a primary driver of apartment fundamentals, is no longer the gold standard for predicting apartment rent growth, according to a RealPage analysis. Cumulative job growth typically has positively correlated with cumulative rent growth, meaning the more jobs a market added, the more apartment rents grew in that market, the analysis said. However, during the past five years, that correlation has weakened.

“There’s a bit of a positive trendline that indicates job growth translates to some rent growth, but the slope of that line is far less steep,” said RealPage. “And equally important, the relationship between the two variables isn’t much more than random.”

One explanation is that highly educated, high-earning employees are more likely to work remotely in the post-pandemic world. This makes a given market’s job gains irrelevant to where employees choose to live.