Will Miami’s tech wave be enough to counter the soaring cost of living?
Despite the technology wave sweeping over Miami, odds are that not everyone here is going to end up working in tech.
But the tech executives sure are making a lot of noise about being here. The trade-off they are proposing goes something like this: Sure, local rents are climbing faster than they ever have, thanks to booming demand from wealthy newcomers, but there are now more — and better paying — jobs than ever before.
According to data from Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s office, 5,896 positions have been promised by companies that moved to
Miami between Oct. 2020 and Nov. 2021. Most of these firms are tech-oriented, though others are strictly in the finance sector. Either way, if they had the wherewithal to move here in the first place, they are not lacking money to pay their workers.
Of that total, 1,909 of these firms’ employees are now working in Miami — ranging from ghost kitchen company REEF’s 515 workers, to companies counted by the mayor’s office as having just one or two employees.
With the caveat that the businesses hiring timelines likely stretch over multiple years, they are only about one-third of the way toward their hiring goals.
In other words, these firms’ Miami payrolls remain two-thirds short of projections.
Some of them, like CI Financial, a Canadian investment giant, have yet to move into their new headquarters at 830 Brickell, which is slated to be completed later this year. The firm is projecting to hire 450 workers locally. Now, it has just five working here.
But real estate does not wait for jobs — and as the Miami Herald reported last week, the office leases being signed at 830 Brickell now rival those found in parts of Manhattan.
In an interview, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez said he is satisfied with the hiring pace of newly arrived tech firms.
“Every day we’re posting the offerings on our own social media,” Suarez said. “We had a jobs fair where we had 2,400 jobs that were being offered. By the way, the people that actually attended was a fraction of that. So I don’t know if we have to do a better job advertising it or what’s happening there.”
For James H. Johnson, a distinguished professor of strategy and entrepreneurship and the director of the Urban Investment
Strategies Center at the University of North Carolina, what Miami is seeing is a usual tale of the costs of economic development on steroids.
“Balancing is the operative term here,” Johnson said. “No one is arguing you don’t want economic development or newcomers coming in. But how do you create a more inclusive and equitable road map for development?”
Suarez and other city commissioners now appear to be well aware of the challenge. Thursday, Suarez, alongside Miami Commission Chair Christine King and Commissioners Ken Russell and Manolo Reyes, announced they intend to pass a resolution directing more than $5 million raised through the MiamiCoin cryptocurrency investment to the city’s rental assistance program. They acknowledged the city had been a victim of its own success in attracting companies.
“We want to take some of that tech that’s been driving everything up and use it to bring things back under control,” said Russell, a Democrat, who this year is running for U.S. Senate against Republican Marco Rubio.
Suarez also told the Miami Herald he has been in touch with Google about a job retraining program that he said has led to an average of a 100% increase in a worker’s salary where it has been applied.
Until all those nearly 6,000 promised jobs arrive in Miami, until those salaries increase and until that housing relief comes, only a few people may end up enjoying an unparalleled quality of life in Miami — while the rest of the city’s residents’ household finances suffer.
“For civil servants or people who teach in public education ... those are the people who are going to get priced out of the marketplace, or be economically dislocated as the price and cost of living goes up,” Johnson said. “The wages of civil servants are not going to be keeping pace, and they risk getting priced out of market. So the question is, can you maintain a stable healthy and safe community?”
Rob Wile: 305-376-3203, @rjwile