Known for country music and, increasingly, hungover bachelorette parties, Nashville now has a new claim to fame: It’s home to America’s hottest job market.
So finds the Wall Street Journal and Moody’s Analytics in their annual ranking of the top job markets in the U.S. Looking at 400 metro areas, they determined the list by factoring in the size and participation rate of the labor force, wages, unemployment rate, and changes in employment levels.
They separated rankings for small areas compared to larger ones that had more than 1 million residents. For the larger metro areas, Southern cities are on the rise. In the top 10, only one city—Salt Lake City—isn’t located in the Sunbelt:
- Nashville, Tenn.
- Austin, Texas
- Jacksonville, Fla.
- Dallas, Texas
- Raleigh, N.C.
- Atlanta, Ga.
- Orlando, Fla.
- Charlotte, N.C.
- Salt Lake City, Utah
- Miami, Fla.
Nashville took the cake, thanks to its tourism boom and the allure of the South’s lower cost of living. The city, along with runner-up Austin, is distinguished by its high labor-force participation, meaning many people there are employed or searching for their next gig.
It’s no surprise that the Sunbelt is experiencing a robust job market, considering that so many people packed up and moved there as remote work became the norm. The migration trend was already underway in the 2010s, accelerating when the pandemic hit. A SmartAsset analysis of IRS data between 2019 and 2020 found that many wealthy Americans were moving to Tennessee, Florida, Texas, and the Carolinas.
During the early days of the pandemic, the region provided more space for former urbanites. And as inflation crept up later, it offered a more affordable way of life for many financially anxious Americans.
“These are lower-cost areas, they are growing rapidly, there’s an increasingly large critical mass of young, educated people,” economist at Moody’s Analytics, Adam Kamins, told the Journal. “The affordability is really appealing to families as well.”
Companies, too, have relocated there, providing greater career opportunities. In 2020, 154 companies announced they were expanding or moving to Austin, including big names like Tesla and Samsung. Nashville has also seen high-profile companies move in, such as AllianceBernstein.
But the surge of workers hasn’t come without ripple effects. In Nashville, locals have expressed concerns over rising prices and a growing housing crisis as transplants settled in. The affordability that was once so appealing could be slowly be diminishing.
At least Nashville will always have the Goo Goo Cluster, though a box of three might be $15 before you know it.