We Were Looking For Prime-Age Workers. Why Did We Find Retirees?

There’s an old joke about a man from Texas who’s on vacation in the Northeast. He stops in Rhode Island and starts talking to a local there: “I can’t believe how small these states are!” the Texan says. “I don’t know how y’all live like this. You know, if I were back home, I could get in my truck first thing in the morning, drive all day, and I’d still be in Texas that night!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I know just how you feel,” says the guy from Rhode Island.

“What do you mean?”

“I used to have a slow, broken-down car like that myself.” 

We’re celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the Lightcast Talent Attraction Scorecard, and it feels like we’ve been in Texas—and Florida—the whole time. Those have been the top two states for every ranking we’ve done, going back to 2015, and this year all ten of the highest-ranking large metro areas are in one or the other. 

What do Texas and Florida have in common? You could come up with plenty—that they have two MLB teams each, they’re home of NASA’s two primary facilities (the Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers), or that they were colonized by Spain only six years apart—but one of the simplest answers might be the most relevant here: they’re warm and sunny. 

The Sunbelt dominates this year’s rankings of both metro areas and states, followed by the Mountain West. This table shows the top 10 highest-ranking metro areas by overall score, by job growth, and by competitive effect (job growth that’s controlled for industry mix effects and national growth effects). 

The people most likely to move to a warmer area are retirees and other older adults. But when we ran our analysis for the Talent Attraction Scorecard, we prioritized prime-age workers—so even if a southern city attracted a large population of older adults, that wouldn’t necessarily correlate to a high ranking on the scorecard. 

And yet, they do anyway. Why? A growing elderly population requires a growing working-age population to support them. 

Healthcare is the most acute need, but the high incomes of late-career earners also contribute to more spending overall. (Every new golf course creates new jobs for landscapers and caddies!) We can see this most clearly in The Villages, Florida—it’s a master-planned development, age-restricted, but its region ranks #1 in talent attraction for mid-sized metros, and #7 overall. 

This trend is good news in the short term for retirement-friendly communities, but it also means they face future workforce risks. As more of their populations reach retirement age, the labor force participation rate will decline, limiting the availability of workers and reducing the income tax base. This is a function of the “Rising Storm” creating demographic waves across the US (and the rest of the world). The Baby Boomers are retiring without enough younger workers to take their place, and a labor market that once expanded to create jobs for a surplus of workers, now faces a looming deficit. The number of older adults in the US is surging now, but that wave won’t last forever. 

For talent attraction, and especially for Sunbelt regions benefitting from a high influx of retirees, this means laying a long-term foundation instead of just enjoying the present. Maybe that looks like investment in healthcare training pipelines, retention strategies, and workforce infrastructure to avoid critical service disruptions in the decade ahead.

The top-performing metros in the Sunbelt and Mountain West benefit from a sunny climate, but they’ve also set themselves apart from their peers. The states and cities at the top of the Talent Attraction Scorecard are there because of intentional, data-informed decisions that align economic development, workforce planning, and infrastructure investment around long-term goals.

Explore this year’s Talent Attraction Scorecard—and see where your city and state rank!—right here. 

Thanks for reading On The Job. Be sure to catch up on our past issues, including "Return-To-Office is Creating Two Classes of Worker," "Six Dos and Don'ts for AI" and "The Next Great Resignation." You can also subscribe here. We’ll see you next time.