The Minneapolis-St. Paul region improved its net flow of tech workers dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to new data released by LinkedIn.
The study looked at the profiles of hundreds of thousands of tech workers and analyzed which cities they were moving from and to, which LinkedIn calls an inflow-outflow ratio.
The results? Minneapolis was the fourth-biggest gainer in terms of its tech talent inflow-outflow ratio. The metro improved by 16.9% from April to October of this year, though it is still losing more tech workers to other metro areas than it gains. For 2020, it had an inflow-outflow ratio of .93, meaning for each 100 tech workers the area lost it gained 93. In 2019, that ratio was .80
The most improved metro was Madison, Wis., which improved its talent ratio by over 74% to 1.77. Other winners include Cleveland and Sacramento. The biggest losers were tech's traditional coastal powers: San Francisco, New York City and Boston, in that order. LinkedIn, however, said that some of these moves may be short-lived and that the balance of power could well return to those costly, coastal cities once the pandemic is over.
LinkedIn's December 2020 Workforce Report, which looks at all industries, might give a hint as to where those workers come from and where they're going. For the Twin Cities, it appears the rule of thumb is to gain talent locally and lose it nationally. In the past year, the three metros Minneapolis-St. Paul gained the most talent from are St. Cloud, Fargo and Duluth. But when people leave, they look farther away: Phoenix, Denver and Seattle were the most likely places for the metro's workers to migrate to.
Madison and the Twin Cities were named last year as the two American metros most likely to become major tech hubs by the Brookings Institution and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. The organizations listed the two cities' concentration of people with college and post-graduate degrees as a major factor.
