Jacksonville Surging as a Destination for Tech Workers

Posted on June 9, 2021

A new study from Bloomberg and LinkedIn revealed that Jacksonville is a preferred destination for tech workers, ranking 4^th in the most recent analysis. Jacksonville was the top-rated city in Florida and significantly ahead of several cities traditionally known as tech hubs like Seattle and San Francisco.

The study examines several hundred thousand tech workers in the United States and breaks down the inflow/outflow rate for several key markets. The data ranges from April to October, comparing 2020 with 2019. These findings complement another LinkedIn survey that showed Jacksonville had the second largest percentage inflow of workers from April 2020 to February 2021.

“We are glad to see a trend we’ve identified validated by independent research,” said Aundra Wallace, president of JAXUSA Partnership. “IT & Innovation has been a target industry for the Jacksonville region for some time and tech workers and entrepreneurs are taking advantage of this by moving to the region and building on the great ecosystem we have in place.”

Jacksonville’s technology composite is among the nation’s leaders. As headquarters for leading tech companies like Black Knight Inc., Newfold Digital, Coastal Cloud, Fanatics and Forcura, Northeast Florida is firmly established in technology and diverse across industries and disciplines. The region is also home to several emerging and startup firms, noted by Roofstock ranking Jacksonville 9^th in their survey of U.S. cities with the most startup businesses.

E-commerce and fintech have been particularly high growth areas for Jacksonville. Over the last five years, JAXUSA has been involved in the announcement of 13 e-commerce companies to the region, with a total investment of more than $3.3 billion in infrastructure and the addition of nearly 18,000 jobs at the time of the announcements. Fintech’s most recent addition was the announcement that Dun & Bradstreet, a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics, was moving their headquarters from New Jersey to Jacksonville. This adds to the already robust fintech base in the area, anchored by FIS, who is underway with their new 300,000-square-foot headquarters along downtown Jacksonville’s riverfront that will add 500 new high-wage jobs and $150 million in capital investment.

“The theory that tech workers need to cluster around traditional tech centers like San Francisco or that fintech can only reside New York is outdated,” added Wallace. “When you combine that with the decoupling of geography from employment like we’ve seen over the last year you realize that Jacksonville is going to be a target destination for tech workers for years to come.”