Where Work Goes, Skills Follow

Hollywood has been the home of film for over 100 years. Wall Street has hosted the international financial sector since the 1850s and the Silicon Valley region employed around a quarter of a million technology professionals in 2013. While all different sectors, they are examples of where skilled workers have travelled to specific regions to work and live. An example of the effect: unemployment in the San Francisco Bay fell from 9.4% in 2009 to 2.7% in August 2019. The rise in technology skills in the area also brought the rise of sales and real estate expertise. This spillover of skills has led to economic growth in the region.

Now, many are starting to predict as to where the “Next Silicon Valley” could be. Tel Aviv, Berlin, Shenzhen and Bengaluru, amongst many more, have all been selected due to the urbanisation of the cities, tech giants moving in and startup scenes rapidly growing. Berlin recently saw the highest increase in startups more than any other European City, Bengaluru’s GDP is expected to grow by 60% in the next five years and Shenzhen is now in the top 5 cities in the world for the most expensive housing.

A new form of analysis that can help predict this phenomenon was introduced by LinkedIn and Indiana University in August this year. They created a ‘global labour flow’ map that tracked the movement of skilled workers and highlighted geo-industrial clusters — where certain skills were appearing in certain geographies and what it meant for the local economy.1 By mapping 500+ million jobs over 25 years, the study showed a positive correlation between the acceleration of college-degree employment growth and increased market capitalisation. It also highlighted the growth and decline of particular industries, movement of roles and skills required and the regional economic growth that followed.

While this is the first analysis built in the context of business strategy, urban economics, regional and international development, it can potentially share insight to help address the critical skills gap. By gauging the roles and skills being introduced in particular sectors, there is a correlation to what education and training that should follow. Certainly, the future cannot be predicted, but it is possible to prepare — making informed decisions based on the anticipation of roles that might appear. With this movement of sectors to particular regions, the next Silicon Valley could then be a region where skills are jobs are equally matched.

1 Global labour flow network reveals the hierarchical organization and dynamics of geo-industrial clusters, Jaehyuk Park et. al., Nature,