The Boom Towns

Between 2019 and 2025, the United States economy added roughly 8 million nonfarm jobs. Spread evenly across 390 metropolitan statistical areas, that would mean modest growth for everyone. But job growth is never spread evenly. It concentrates — in specific regions, specific industries, specific cities that happen to be in the right place at the right time with the right mix of housing, talent, and economic momentum.

The metros that grew fastest since 2019 tell a remarkably consistent geographic story. Austin added 238,000 jobs, a gain of 20.9%. Fayetteville, Arkansas — home to Walmart’s headquarters and a booming logistics corridor — grew 19.9%. Boise surged 18.5% as remote workers and California refugees flooded into Idaho’s capital. Of the 25 fastest-growing metros, not a single one is in the Northeast or the traditional Midwest. The Sun Belt migration, long discussed in anecdotal terms, now shows up as hard employment data.

This episode maps the boom towns — the metros that have grown fastest since the eve of the pandemic. We examine what they have in common, where the growth is concentrated, and which metros are moving in the opposite direction.

The ten fastest-growing metros since 2019 fall into three distinct categories: tech migration hubs, university-anchored metros, and lifestyle relocation destinations. Most of them are two or even all three at once.

Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX leads the nation at +20.9%, growing from 1,140,800 to 1,379,000 jobs. Austin’s transformation from a mid-sized state capital into a major technology center accelerated dramatically during the pandemic. Tesla moved its headquarters there. Oracle relocated. Samsung expanded its chip fabrication. But the real engine is a broad ecosystem of tech startups, corporate campuses, and the gravitational pull of the University of Texas, which produces a steady pipeline of engineering and business talent. Austin added more than 238,000 jobs in six years — roughly the entire employment base of a city like Baton Rouge.

Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR is the surprise at number two with +19.9%. Northwest Arkansas is the headquarters of Walmart, Tyson Foods, and J.B. Hunt Transport, three Fortune 500 companies whose supply chain and corporate operations have expanded steadily. The region has also invested heavily in cultural amenities — the Crystal Bridges Museum, a world-class cycling trail network — that attract young professionals. From 268,800 jobs in 2019 to 322,400 in 2025, this metro has quietly become one of the fastest-growing in the country.

College Station-Bryan, TX (#3, +19.4%) is anchored by Texas A&M University, one of the largest universities in the nation with over 70,000 students. The surrounding metro benefits from university-related research spending, healthcare expansion, and a steady inflow of students who stay after graduation. Boise City, ID (#4, +18.5%) exemplifies the pandemic-era lifestyle migration: affordable housing relative to the West Coast, outdoor recreation access, and a growing tech presence led by Micron Technology and Hewlett Packard operations.

Huntsville, AL (#5, +17.4%) is the defense and aerospace capital of the South. Redstone Arsenal, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and a growing cluster of defense contractors — including a new FBI headquarters facility — have driven sustained job creation. Provo-Orem-Lehi, UT (#6, +17.1%) sits at the heart of Utah’s “Silicon Slopes,” home to Qualtrics, Vivint, and dozens of SaaS companies. Young demographics and a high birth rate add organic population growth to the migration-driven expansion.

Raleigh-Cary, NC (#7, +16.9%) benefits from the Research Triangle ecosystem — Duke, UNC, NC State — and a diversified economy spanning biotech, banking, and technology. Lakeland-Winter Haven, FL (#8, +16.3%) has grown as a logistics and distribution hub between Tampa and Orlando, with Amazon and other e-commerce companies building massive fulfillment centers. Wilmington, NC (#9, +15.7%) and Charleston-North Charleston, SC (#10, +15.4%) round out the top ten, both coastal Carolina metros that combine lifestyle appeal with diversifying economies in manufacturing, healthcare, and professional services.

No state appears on the boom-town list more often than Florida. Six metros — Lakeland-Winter Haven (+16.3%), Ocala (+14.2%), Port St. Lucie (+13.8%), North Port-Sarasota (+13.5%), Naples-Marco Island (+12.5%), and Cape Coral-Fort Myers (+12.2%) — rank among the 25 fastest-growing in the country. And this list does not even include Orlando (+12.6%), which at 1.5 million jobs is one of the largest metros in the entire Southeast.

The Florida growth pattern has a distinct geography. It is not Miami — the state’s largest metro is growing, but at a more moderate pace. The explosive growth is happening along the I-4 corridor between Tampa and Orlando, along the Gulf Coast from Sarasota to Naples, and in the Treasure Coast communities of Port St. Lucie and Fort Myers. These are the places where retirees, remote workers, and families priced out of South Florida are landing.

Lakeland-Winter Haven is the best example of this dynamic. Situated between Tampa and Orlando on Interstate 4, the metro has become a major distribution and logistics hub. Amazon, Publix, and multiple third-party logistics providers have built massive warehouses there, taking advantage of lower land costs and central access to the state’s population. The area added 39,300 jobs in six years, a 16.3% gain that far outpaces the state average.

The Gulf Coast metros — Sarasota, Naples, Cape Coral, and Fort Myers — are driven by a different mix: retirement migration, healthcare expansion to serve an aging population, and a construction boom that shows few signs of slowing. These metros do not produce technology startups. They produce hospitals, assisted living facilities, restaurants, and residential developments. It is a growth model built on demographics rather than industry, and as long as 10,000 Americans per day turn 65, it has staying power.

While the Sun Belt boomed, a handful of metros went in the opposite direction. The contrast with the top of the list is stark — and the causes are just as illuminating as the boom-town stories.

Lake Charles, Louisiana leads the decline at −12.5%. The metro was hit by a devastating one-two punch: the 2020 economic shutdown cratered demand for petrochemicals and LNG, and then Hurricanes Laura and Delta destroyed thousands of homes and businesses in a matter of weeks. Five years later, the population has not fully returned. Thousands of residents relocated permanently, taking their spending power and labor with them. The petrochemical plants have largely restarted, but the workforce has not recovered to pre-2019 levels.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa (−5.4%) has struggled with the secular decline of food processing and light manufacturing, compounded by a devastating derecho in August 2020 that caused billions in damage. Davenport-Moline (−3.7%), straddling the Iowa-Illinois border, is an old manufacturing metro that has lost jobs steadily as companies have automated or relocated production. New Orleans (−3.6%) continues a decline that predates the pandemic — the city never fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the oil and gas sector’s contraction has removed another pillar of the local economy.

San Francisco (−3.5%) is the most closely watched declining metro in America. The city lost jobs during the pandemic tech pullback, and the rise of remote work has permanently reduced the need for office workers in the Bay Area. The tech industry’s shift toward remote and hybrid models means that many of the jobs created by San Francisco companies are now located in Austin, Denver, Nashville, and Boise — which is to say, in the metros at the top of this list. San Francisco remains an enormously productive economy, but it is a smaller one than it was in 2019.

Springfield, MA (−3.4%), Milwaukee, WI (−2.3%), and Cleveland, OH (−1.8%) round out the declining metros. All three are legacy industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest that have struggled for decades with manufacturing losses, population decline, and the gravitational pull of faster-growing regions. Milwaukee and Cleveland have significant healthcare and financial services sectors that have partially offset manufacturing declines, but not enough to keep total employment above 2019 levels.