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At the end of 2022, we shared information about Tulsa Remote, a project to attract remote workers to the US City of Tulsa by paying them $10,000 in moving costs and monthly stipends. But has the project been successful and is it an example for other cities suffering brain drain?
Tulsa Remote: About the Program
Tulsa Remote launched in 2018 as a program to attract remote workers to the city to help with decreasing population and brain drain. Between 2016 and 2018 the city suffered three consecutive years of negative migration and the slowest population growth since 1990. Stats show that most university graduates are leaving the state on the look for bigger opportunities, principally in Texas.
Tulsa Remote attempts to reverse this trend by attracting qualified remote workers. To apply, you must be a US citizen or green card holder, employed remotely, and living outside of Oklahoma. You must commit to staying in Tulsa for at least one year. In return, you receive a stipend of $10,000 over the course of 12 months to help cover the cost of the move and settling in. Beyond that, you get access to dedicated coworking spaces, where you can work alongside other remote workers engaged in the program. There is also a regular program of social events to help newcomers meet locals and become involved in local activities and organizations.
Benefits for Tulsa
According to the Tulsa Remote website, they have already welcomed more than 3,000 talented remote workers to Telsa via the program. The program began with just 70 participants when it recruited its first cohort in 2019, but it is now adding 30-70 participants per month.
The site also claims that in the five years of operation to December 2023, remote workers have generated more than $563.6 million in direct employment income for the city.
The financial impact report published at the end of 2023 also states that 88% of participants have chosen to stay for more than the required 12 months, and 18% of those alumni have chosen to open businesses locally. The report states that the program is responsible for 3,554 full-time jobs in the area, 2,252 held by participants who chose to stay beyond their period of financial support, and 1,302 local jobs created to support increased household spending, especially in healthcare, hospitality, retail, and real estate.
The report also claims that the program has resulted in significant tax benefits in the order of $4.4 million for Tulsa and $6.8 million for the state of Oklahoma. The program also resulted in $181,213 in new labor income per participant, suggesting that the program is bringing in around 13 times what it costs.
The program is also reportedly helping diversify Tulsa’s local tech sector, resulting in Tulsa being named one of 31 Tech Hubs selected by the US Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration as part of a $500 million investment in strengthening the country’s progress in key areas such as cybersecurity and advanced manufacturing.
As an extension of this, Tulsa hosted the Plugged In Remote Work Summit this October. The program included a report on the success of the program and how to create livable and loveable cities for a nomadic future.
Benefits for Participants
Professor Choudhury at the Harvard Business School has been gathering data and has surveyed 1,243 people, including 400 Tulsa Remote participants and 800 applicants who did not end up in the program. He found that participants in the program have saved an average of $25,000 on yearly housing costs. The Tulsa median home price is $239,000, compared to the national median of $428,000, and the median rent is $1.395 compared to the national median of $2,080.
Several participants have shared their stories. Dan Avery moved from New York just before the pandemic in 2019, attracted by the concentration of remote workers and access to a shared coworking space more than the financial incentive. This paid off as interest in the program boomed with the pandemic, with a small cohort of 70 booming to one of almost 400 in just a few months.
Jade Marcotte, a project manager, moved from Brooklyn in October 2021 and less than a year later purchased a home for about a third of what she would have had to pay back in Brooklyn. While she doesn’t intend to stay in Tulsa forever, it has been a highly beneficial financial investment.
Cynthia Rollins, a COO of a software company, moved from California to Tulsa at the end of 2020. For her, the move was an opportunity to free up both her time and money to invest in her fashion business. While California seemed like the place to do this, being at the heart of the national fashion industry, she could only find the capacity when she was preoccupied with the long daily commutes and the higher cost of living. She is now in the process of opening her own online retail venture.
Potential Challenges
According to a recent report in Fortune, the biggest concerns facing Tulsa as a result of the program are whether the housing supply is sufficient to meet demand and gentrification, with mostly higher-paid more well-educated people moving into the area. The median age of Tula Remote members is 35 and 88% have a college degree, compared to 32% for the local population.
Tulsa is taking active steps to mitigate these risks, such as modulating cohort sizes to adjust to available housing and working with local realtors and lenders to ensure equitable access to housing. The threat is currently seen as under control with only 500 Tulsa Remote participants purchasing homes in the area to date, compared with a total of more than 20,000 homes sold in the same period.
Is Tulsa an Example for Other Cities?
Tulsa is only one of scores of US cities experimenting with financial incentives to attract remote workers, but it is also among the most successful. Why?
Tulsa offers one of the highest financial incentives and doesn’t restrict how the money can be spent. Many other programs require that money be spent specifically on relocation or the down payment on a house. But people who have participated in the Tulsa program have shared that they are keen on the money to pay debt and consolidate their finances, or to inject into business ideas that they have struggled to get off the ground elsewhere.
In addition, while most of the cities looking to attract remote workers have an affordable cost of living, Tulsa is significantly larger than many other cities, with a population of around 500,000, rather than 20,000. This means that Tulsa still feels vibrant and exciting, and like a place where you can meet new people and establish new social circles.
Tulsa is also a bigger program, able to attract scores of remote workers per month, rather than per year, making the remote work community feel more vibrant. This makes the perks such as access to remote workspaces and knowledge exchange opportunities more enticing.
Finally, many participants say that they would not have made the move if it wasn’t for the integration program that makes settling in with both locals and other new arrivals easier. Picking up your life and moving to a new place where you don’t know anyone and don’t have connections can be hard, and this helped take some of the fear out of the challenge.
These seem to be the lessons learned from Tulsa Remote that could be applied by other cities looking to attract remote workers. However, program organizers say that their aim is not for the program to continue in perpetuity. Eventually, they want to rebrand Tulsa as a dynamic and tech-friendly destination that remote workers will want to move to without the financial incentives. Only time will tell if the program can lead to this kind of transformation.
