St. Louis: Hottest Job Market, Best Places to Live
- April 10, 2024
2024 is shaping up to be a great year for St. Louis and its surrounding suburbs. New developments are making progress towards opening, and tech entrepreneurs are leaning into St. Louis as the center of tech and innovation all while the Gateway City makes headlines for being a great place to live and work.
Great place to live, great place for new development:
Chesterfield, Missouri, located 20 miles west of downtown St. Louis, is one of two St. Louis suburbs to make Niche.com’s list of 2024 Best Places to Live in America. The study looks at cost of living, schools, crime, outdoor activities, job opportunities, and diversity to determine the nation’s top 20 places to live. We don’t see Chesterfield leaving a list like this anytime soon. The city has two massive mixed-use projects in the works, a $500M redevelopment and a $2B downtown development.
Gateway Studios, a $111 million development, is also under construction in Chesterfield and set to open in 2024. Its developers expect it to be “the largest entertainment manufacturing, production services and rehearsal facility of its kind in the U.S.,” providing touring artists space for practice and rehearsal before tours. The company chose the 32-acre Chesterfield site for its excellent central location and close proximity to a regional airport.
Hot job market, hot innovation market:
St. Louis landed at #18 on the Wall Street Journal’s latest ranking of the 20 hottest job markets in the U.S. In the study, 380 labor markets were assessed on five attributes: unemployment rate; labor-force participation rate; change in the average monthly employment; and wages.
In the same week, Bill & Melinda Gates’ Agricultural Innovations (Gates Ag One) opened in St. Louis’ Cortex Innovation District. Cortex is a vibrant innovation district and technology hub where entrepreneurs, researchers, and tech companies come together to collaborate, innovate, and grow. Cortex is focused on fostering innovation and entrepreneurship in fields like bioscience, technology, and advanced manufacturing.
“St. Louis has obviously been a longstanding city for a lot of innovation in the area of life sciences and specifically around agriculture,” Gates Ag One COO Al Gallegos said. “It’s in very close proximity to not only lots of innovation partners, but also land that is very important for the agriculture industry.” He adds that locating its home office in the city will also enable Gates Ag One to attract more talent from agriculture, life sciences, and research.”
Quoted in AgFundernews
St. Louis is an innovation hub with great communities to work and live in, boasting a low cost of living and high quality of life. With growing life science, agtech, and geospatial industries, and new industries resulting from large developments, St. Louis is a vibrant job market and a great place to live and grow your family or your business. We’re excited to see what’s next for the Gateway to the West.