Tampa Bay job opportunities outpace major cities
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The hottest job markets in the country aren't in big cities.
- Instead, smaller metro areas like Tampa Bay look mighty at the moment, at least comparatively.
Why it matters: Nationwide, the labor market is slowing down, particularly for white-collar professionals in tech-heavy cities, Axios' Emily Peck reports.
By the numbers: The number of job listings in Tampa Bay grew by 6.8% from February 2020 to October, according to new data from jobs site Indeed.
- San Francisco job postings, meanwhile, declined 37% in the same period, and Seattle saw a 35% decline.
- New York City also saw a drop, by around 14%.
State of play: Metro areas that saw gains had labor markets more weighted toward health care, and leisure and hospitality, says Allison Shrivastava, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab.
- Those two sectors accounted for more than 100% of net job gains in 2025 so far, Bloomberg recently reported.
Between the lines: The white-collar pullback is also partly due to the Trump administration's job cuts and the hiring freeze in place for much of the year.
The bottom line: The job market looks a lot like the real estate market; it's all about location, location, location.
- And job openings are always industry-contingent.