The University of Toronto School of Cities recently looked at the changing economic geography of Fortune 500 companies across the US from 1975 to 2017. Here is a diagram of the results taken from CityLab:
New York sits at the top with 70 corporate headquarters as of 2017. But the San Francisco Bay Area is now the second largest center with 35 headquarters – a testament to tech.
The study does, however, omit service firms, as these weren’t tracked in Fortune’s list back in 1975.
Also noteworthy is the specialization that has taken place across specific cities and regions. Here is another excerpt from CityLab:
America’s headquarters geography reflects the substantial variation and specialization of the U.S. economy. New York leads in finance and business services, consumer services, and goods and materials. But Houston leads in energy, San Jose in tech, and Chicago in retail and wholesale. Chicago also ranks second in consumer services, and goods and materials, and Dallas takes third in energy. Other cities like Nashville and Minneapolis take third in consumer services, and goods and materials, respectively.
The full article can be found, here.
