May LinkedIn Workforce Report: Tax burdens drive many to move across the country

This month we're taking a look at tax burdens in states where we've seen migration trends influenced by income, sales and property taxes. Though there's a correlation between states with lower taxes and states that more people are moving to, the states with the very lowest tax burdens aren’t the top attractors in terms of migration inflows. Instead, the cities gaining the most people are those rich in economic opportunities – with strong hiring and relatively affordable housing, according to the May LinkedIn Workforce Report.

The U.S. cities gaining the most people are Denver, Austin, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Nashville, which each have tax burdens near the middle of the pack.

Other key insights:

• Hiring strong and stable through April – In April, hiring across the U.S. was 19.8 percent higher than in April 2017. Seasonally-adjusted hiring, nationally, was 2.1 percent higher in April than in March 2018. The industries with the biggest year-over-year hiring increases in March were aerospace, automotive, and transportation (23.3 percent higher); financial services & insurance (22.2 percent higher); and manufacturing and industrial (17.3 percent higher).

• The U.S. needs 230,000 more people with marketing skills –  Companies, large and small, need marketing to grow. Small businesses may not have resources for a full-time marketing hire, but they still need these skills—which range from social media and digital marketing, to market research and branding. Given how critical marketing skills are across sectors, we were surprised to find that the U.S. has a national shortage of 230,000 people with marketing skills. The San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and even New York City—the center of the advertising universe—have the greatest shortages of people with these skills. But smaller cities like Nashville, Charlotte and Tucson also have a shortage. So where are all the marketers? The cities with the biggest surpluses are Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, St. Louis, Las Vegas, and Orange County.

Click here to read more of our May LinkedIn Workforce Report, including which cities are losing the most workers, and which are gaining the most.

Over 146 million workers in the U.S. have LinkedIn profiles; over 20,000 companies in the U.S. use LinkedIn to recruit; over 3 million jobs are posted on LinkedIn in the U.S. every month; and members can add over 50,000 skills to their profiles to showcase their professional brands. This gives us unique insights into U.S. workforce trends.

The LinkedIn Workforce Report helps workers better navigate their careers by highlighting workforce trends in the U.S. and across 20 cities. Insights include whether hiring is up, down, or flat, which skills cities need most, and where workers are moving to and from.