Gen Z fled San Francisco for Texas and Florida. Now they’re turning ‘welcomer cities’ into the next big tech towns

The next wave of the migration story is already underway, and it’s moving the innovation economy into unexpected territory.

From the mid-2000s through the late 2010s, San Francisco was a magnet for young graduates driven largely by Web 2.0 and the mobile tech boom. It was a cool city that boasted high-paying jobs and promised a breezy West Coast lifestyle.

But in the past several years, younger workers have been ditching San Francisco for cheaper cities and better work-life balance. It started with a pandemic exodus, as workers moved to be closer to their families or to pursue a different lifestyle; then they steadily drifted toward Texas and Florida, where jobs were plentiful and rent was more manageable. In fact, a survey by global architecture firm Gensler showed nearly half of San Francisco’s young, childless adults were contemplating a move.

And now an April report from commercial real estate and investment management firm JLL shows there’s a third chapter in San Francisco’s migration script in which younger generations are moving to “welcomer cities” like Nashville and Orlando.

JLL now defines Nashville and Orlando as welcomers because they still offer plenty of corporate job opportunities, but are more affordable than large cities. 

“Specifically, Nashville’s outsized cultural presence and Orlando’s favorable tax policy make them powerful magnets for talent,” Travis McCready, head of industries, leasing advisory at JLL, told Fortune. 

McCready pointed out welcomer cities overall have a net migration rate of 5.2% over the past three years, while “anchor” cities like New York and the Bay Area grew just 0.6% from migration over the same time period.

What this also means is welcomer cities like Nashville and Orlando are now legitimate contenders in the innovation economy, according to JLL, which tracks talent migration, office market dynamics, and corporate investment across 135 cities globally. 

Will ‘welcomer cities’ stick?

Especially in the past few years, Gen Z has been flocking to more affordable cities just to get by during the cost-of-living crisis. Aside from places like Texas and Florida, many have made moves to the Midwest, where homes are about 30% cheaper than on the coasts. 

A 2025 ConsumerAffairs analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) data found that seven of the 10 most accessible metros for young homeowners are in the Midwest. Unsurprisingly, California dominated the list of the least affordable metro areas for Gen Z.

A cost-of-living comparison by Apartments.com shows the cost of living in San Francisco is 80.6% higher than in Orlando, and housing prices are 226.2% higher. Compared with Nashville, San Francisco’s cost of living is 66.3% higher, and housing is nearly 150% more expensive. 

“The pull factors that drew people to affordability- and lifestyle-oriented cities [like Nashville and Orlando] are not likely to disappear, and people have built lives, bought homes, and put down roots in these markets,” McCready said.

Corporate migration also reinforces why younger people are moving. In 2024, Oracle announced plans to establish what it called its “world headquarters” in Nashville, committing $1.2 billion in capital investment over a decade and pledging to add 8,500 jobs to the area, with Tennessee state leaders offering a $65 million economic grant to help offset costs. (Although recent reports suggest Oracle is struggling a bit to attract workers to its office.)

Starbucks also this spring announced it would debut a corporate hub in Nashville, which would reportedly be 250,000 square feet, or large enough for up to 2,000 employees, according to CoStar.

“With these growth plans, we see Nashville, Tennessee, as an ideal location to open an office and establish a more strategic presence in the Southeast region of the U.S.,” Starbucks COO Mike Grams said in a statement.

In Orlando, Travel + Leisure made the decision to relocate its global headquarters downtown—a move McCready called “a signal worth paying attention to.” Boston-based cybersecurity firm SimSpace also moved its headquarters to Orlando this year, and global banking software company Temenos, AMD, and Charles Schwab have all announced expansions in Orlando in the past couple of years. 

Despite all of these moves, it by no means suggests cities like San Francisco or New York are dead. It just means they are competing more now with midsize markets. 

“What we are seeing in established hubs like New York and the Bay Area is a recovery, but it’s highly selective,” McCready said. “Demand is concentrating in places and spaces with high degrees of accessibility, visibility, and access to amenities. And the supply in those markets is genuinely constraining: Only about 9% of office space in the Bay Area and major anchor cities was built after 2020.

“So even companies that want to consolidate in San Francisco or New York are competing for a very thin slice of truly desirable space,” he continued.

The office market math

For companies weighing a relocation decision, the numbers in emerging innovation hubs like Orlando or Nashville tell a compelling story. Nashville ranked among the top five U.S. markets for absorption-to-delivery ratios in 2025, with 35% of new supply absorbed last year, alongside New York, Charlotte, Seattle, and Phoenix. Class A rents sit at $43.52 per square foot, which is meaningfully below large-city rates but in space McCready describes as “genuinely competitive.”

Orlando’s vacancy rate of 15.3% is well below the national average of 22.4%, and the market is seeing steady demand for high-quality, amenity-rich space. That stands in contrast to the Bay Area, where only about 9% of total office inventory was built after 2020, and where prime rents average $1,296 per square meter. Class A+ rents in a welcomer city (like Orlando or Nashville) average $627 per square meter, roughly half that figure, according to JLL’s data.

“You are competing for very little space against very deep-pocketed incumbents” in San Francisco, McCready said. “Emerging hubs offer something increasingly rare: optionality. More modern inventory, more competitive rents, and—critically—talent pools that are growing, not just circulating.”

A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on April 2, 2026.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com