Austin’s Reign as a Tech Hub Might Be Coming to an End
Regional tech hubs across the U.S. are losing talent as workers return to the coasts, with Austin being one of the hardest hit
Nearly five years after Austin, Texas, became a darling of the tech industry, luring companies out of California with the promise of lower taxes and a better quality of life, the city is now bleeding tech talent that is flowing back to the coasts.A new report from venture-capital firm SignalFire shows that in 2024 Big Tech employment declined 1.6% in Austin, and startup employment fell 4.9%. Tech employment in Dallas and Houston also declined, along with cities like Denver and Toronto. Tech employment grew, on the other hand, in New York and San Francisco.
It is a shift from five years ago, when Texas seemed like a growing Sunbelt beacon for tech, luring companies like Tesla, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle from California, and inspiring a number of remote tech workers and startups to follow them. But many of those companies have since laid off workers and Oracle actually relocated from Texas to Nashville, Tenn.
“I think that promise was never realized,” said Asher Bantock, SignalFire’s head of research. “This idea that it would become a new startup hub didn’t materialize.”
Return-to-office requirements combined with the burgeoning artificial-intelligence industry centralizing in Silicon Valley drew workers back West, while Austin’s fluctuating living costs and outdated infrastructure left new transplants frustrated, Bantock said
