How Cities Can Attract Remote Workers and Keep Them

When the Covid pandemic made the already growing trend of remote work ubiquitous five years ago, it also opened possibilities for where people could decide to live.

“For so long in history, where you work has been tied to where you live,” says Evan Starr, a management professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business who studies employee mobility. “With remote work you can separate who you work for from where you live.”

That’s now possible for a relatively large chunk of the workforce, he says, spurring some cities and towns to come up with ways to attract remote workers to revitalize their regions. This competition for people hasn’t existed before, Starr says. The biggest risk for communities is that they succeed in attracting remote workers, who cash in on incentives but then move on for the next town without creating any real economic benefits.

“It’s got to be a win-win,” he says. “They have to give them a reason to stay.”

Starr recently spoke with CBS Evening News about a program in once-booming Cumberland, Md., which is offering $20,000 for 10 people willing to move there and bring their job with them. Its offer is one of many similar programs across the country. 

In his research, Starr looks at how localities are using these kinds of programs to attract new workers, and what factors make them successful. His research, with co-authors Thomaz Teodorovicz of Copenhagen Business School and Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury of Harvard Business School, is published in Organization Science.

The researchers studied Tulsa Remote, a relocation program that offers $10,000, co-working space and community connection activities to get remote workers to move to Oklahoma and stay. The program, which started in 2018, has relocated more than 3,000 people.

The Tulsa program has been so successful because it focuses on helping people make connections in the community. Starr says that’s the main takeaway from his research: “You can use this fungible asset — like $10,000 — to recruit the right people, then you have to convert it into something that’s location-specific, like helping the recipient buy a house, get embedded in a neighborhood or school system, or get engaged in the community.”

Despite a return to in-person work for many government and private industry employees, Starr says he doesn’t think remote work is going away anytime soon. “Workers really value it, and many companies embrace it, realizing it saves them money.”

That means geographic competition for workers is also here to stay. Starr points to 200+ listings on MakeMyMove.com, where people can search for and apply to relocation incentive programs throughout the United States, as proof.

“You can think of geographic competition almost like a new industry,” he says. “Tulsa Remote was like an early mover. Now with a bunch of new programs popping up, it’s getting really competitive. It’s harder for any one locality to win.”

Read the research, “Location-Specificity and Relocation Incentive Programs for Remote Workers,” published in Organization Science.