Since the pandemic, Georgia has seen the fourth-most gains in job postings by West Coast tech companies.
Georgia trails only Texas, Virginia and New York among states that have experienced the greatest increases in those new job listings, according to data from the Conference Board.
Largest gains in West Coast tech job postings since the pandemic:
Texas: 2.7%
Virginia: 1.8%
New York: 1.2%
Georgia: .9%
Atlanta's tech boom: In Georgia, two West Coast tech companies are expanding their outposts in the City of Atlanta. Google will occupy 19 floors in the 1105 West Peachtree tower in Midtown. On the west side of the city, Microsoft plans to develop a campus in the Grove Park neighborhood that will include up to 15,000 jobs. The company has already opened its cloud computing and artificial intelligence office in Midtown's two-tower Atlantic Yards development, part of the larger Atlantic Station project.
Big picture: The increase in job postings is part of a larger trend of companies based in California, Oregon and Washington looking to other American regions for tech talent. According to Conference Board, 43% of tech job postings by such companies are outside of the west coast, an increase of 13% from 2019.
Why it's happening: The trend started before the pandemic, but was also accelerated by it. The ability to work remotely gave large companies flexibility to hire in other U.S. regions. The country has also experienced a migration of workers moving from expensive cities in California to more affordable ones. From 2020 to 2021, California’s population decreased by 350,000 people, with many leaving the San Francisco area. During that same period, Atlanta’s population increased by 51,000. Atlanta is also seen by many companies as a good place to recruit talent. Georgia Tech is one of the top schools in the country for software engineering. Atlanta also has more diversity in its tech ecosystem than other cities.
They said it: “Not only is this a generally more affordable market than other major tech hubs … but Atlanta’s diverse tech talent pool is both very large and growing rapidly,” said Christian Devlin, senior vice president at CBRE in Atlanta. “As long as out-of-town companies continue to expand outside of their headquarters markets, then I expect this trend to continue.”
Something to watch: One possible downside to an increase in high paying, white-collar jobs is an increase in the cost of living. Atlanta, while pricier than the average American city, has managed to maintain affordability. The rise in rent and home prices seen recently in Atlanta largely reflect national trends. Atlanta's soaring home prices are rising at one of the fastest rates in the nation.
The median home value in the Atlanta metropolitan statistical area went up 34% from March 2020 through November 2021, according to Zillow data. That ranked 32nd out of the 200 most populous metro areas in the United States.
