The City That Businesses Are Fleeing

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 21, 9:30AM EDT

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The City That Businesses Are Fleeing — © Sean Pavone / iStock via Getty Images

A great deal has been made about the relocation of millions of Americans since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many people moved because they could work from home. Others moved because they wanted to live in cities less expensive than those they left. Still, others moved for lifestyle reasons. Less well understood is the movement of entire companies. These movements showed that certain cities were the target of corporation migration. None was hurt more than Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to Harvard and MIT, two of the most highly rated universities in America. (These are the 50 best college towns in America.)
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Hire A Helper’s “2023 Study: Corporate Relocation at Highest Rate Since 2017” report showed that about 9% of American companies have changed their headquarters locations since the start of 2022. About one-fifth of relocations were within the same city. About a third moved to another city within the state where they were previously located.
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The researchers offered a theory about Cambridge’s problem: “This famous college town next to Boston, MA has long been a mecca for many biotech and pharma firms, which seemingly doesn’t leave room for previous industry giants.” Throughout the period 2022 to 2023, the net headquarters movement of Cambridge was −40%, when companies that left were compared to companies that moved to the city.
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Financial statement data sets published by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission were the source of most of the data for the study. The yardstick used was changed based on the term “business address.”
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Here are the top 10 cities where outbound movement topped inbound movement on a percentage basis:

Cambridge, Mass. (−40.0%)
Seattle, Wash. (−37.5%)
San Jose, Calif. (−25.0%)
San Francisco, Calif. (−21.9%)
Chicago, Ill. (−20.0%)
Miami Beach, Fla. (−17.4%)
Fremont, Calif. (−16.7%)
Greenwood Village, Colo. (−16.7%)
Menlo Park, Calif. (−16.7%)
Santa Monica, Calif. (−16.3%)

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.