Companies Focused on Cities with Skilled Workers

With cities and urban areas attracting more people and an increasing population not only in primary cities but also in secondary cities, the population in these areas is also creating a highly skilled employee pool for potential employers. Due to this some companies are either expanding and putting new offices in these cities or they are moving their company to these cities to benefit from the pool of skilled workers.

This is quite the contrast from years ago when many companies were moving away from the city to build large campuses in the suburbs and individuals were moving into the suburbs as well. Now with the live, work, play lifestyle that is highly desired by many, people are more attracted to living in the city or metro area.

Recently, McDonald’s moved its headquarters from a suburb in Chicago into downtown Chicago. McDonald’s is not the only one that is moving out of the suburbs and into downtown Chicago, Kraft Heinz also made the move. In the process, they downsized their facilities which is a trend among companies who are moving into the city. The most skill dependent positions are now typically being put into the city areas and then other functions like human resources are being kept in other suburban campuses throughout the country.

One of the main drivers of these moves is to increase the chances of recruiting top talent. Part of this top talent is also the idea of attracting more millennials. The attractiveness of millennials is that they are typically more tech savvy than other generations and they are the future of the work force. By investing in a move to a city you are essentially investing in the future of your business.

With millennials truly caring about the environment they are working in; the city has many of the things they are looking for as well as the trendy look of refurbished and redone industrial spaces utilized for office space. It is also important to consider the area within the city that the offices will be located in. If it is an area that is not necessarily an attractive place for millennials to spend their time outside the office then the move may not have as large of an impact on hiring as possible.

For the commercial real estate industry, this has some positives and some negatives. The positive side being that properties in the city that may have not been of interest in the past may now be more interesting to these corporations who are looking for a city location. It also means that some industrial city buildings may have more opportunity in them then just another industrial operation.

The negative side is that large corporate campuses away from the city may now start to become abandoned and finding tenants to cover these large footprints could prove to be difficult.