Top Talent Prefers These Red-Hot Job Markets

The metropolitan areas where employers and employees want to settle are in flux this decade.

COVID-19 accelerated the flexible on-site work routine for millions of people. And as companies insisted their people come back into the office, a company’s location is more critical than ever.

Bottom line: It pays to be where people want to work and live. A hot job market makes it easier for startups to get off the ground and established companies to attract top talent and expand. We’ve seen a seismic shift since the past decade where the traditional top cities — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, et al — are losing ground to upstarts.

The Wall Street Journal and Moody’s Analytics did a deep dive into 380 metro areas and ranked them based on unemployment, labor-force participation, change in employment levels, size of the labor force and wages to determine the hottest job markets of 2023. Rankings could change over the next couple of years, but at least three trends are apparent:

• Florida is steadily gaining ground on Texas as the premier, business-friendly big state
• Red (Republican) cities and states are growing due in part to lower tax rates, and
• a challenger to Silicon Valley is hard to pass up for tech companies.

Top 10 Job Markets

Topping the list is Salt Lake City, Utah. Nicknamed “Silicone Slopes” for its nearby ski resorts, Salt Lake is drawing white-collar tech and finance talent from northern and southern California. “There’s a virtuous cycle where young, highly educated workers are moving into Salt Lake City and bringing in more money to that area,” says Moody’s Adam Kamins. Salt Lake also ranked second in labor-force participation and fifth in wages.

But it’s clearly Florida that’s dominating when it comes to job growth. Four of the top six cities on the Moody’s/WSJ list are in the Sunshine State. Here are the top 10 metro areas:

1. Salt Lake City, Utah
2. Jacksonville, FL
3. Orlando, FL
4. Tampa, FL
5. Oklahoma City
6. Miami, FL
7. Nashville, Tennessee
8. Austin, Texas
9. Seattle, Washington
10. Dallas, TX