LinkedIn’s new report shows that Tampa is among the 15 fastest-growing tech hubs in the U.S., many of which it describes as “Sunbelt Surprises.” In fact, if you look at the list, three of the cities are in Florida, and the only city that can be described as “northern” is Seattle.
The report was created by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph Team, who based it on data from 6 million LinkedIn members with “identifiable engineering or IT talent from January to May each year since 2019.” This means that the three-fourths of the time covered by the study was during the disruptive COVID-19 era, the Great Resignation, and the recent economic downturn.
The study also focused on metro areas showing the fastest growth rates, which would rule out more-established places like that other, lesser Bay Area and Austin.
Note that one of the top 15 cities is a reasonable drive from Tampa — Sarasota, which is becoming a go-to place for cryptocurrency entrepreneurs. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this is a good thing or a bad one.
The other Florida city is Cape Coral, which is nicely situated halfway between Tampa and Miami and features beautiful surroundings and relatively affordable houses — if you can work remotely, it’s a pretty nice place to set up shop.