Three Gulf Coast metros land in national top 10 for high-wage job growth

Three regions on the west coast of Florida have made the top 10 on a national ranking of large U.S. metropolitan areas for high-wage job growth: Tampa Bay, North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota and Lakeland-Winter Haven.

This is the second consecutive year the Tampa Bay region has made the top 10 of the report, the Tampa Bay Economic Development Council announced Monday, landing in the No. 10 spot on the 2026 Talent Attraction Scorecard from Lightcast. Lakeland-Winter Haven was ranked the ninth-best large metropolitan area for expanding employment in higher-paying occupations, while the North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota market was No. 6. 

A global labor market analytics company that combines traditional government labor statistics with real-time data from job postings, career profiles on social media and company datasets across 165 countries, Lightcast measures states and metropolitan areas on their success in attracting and retaining workers. The 2026 report analyzed labor market data from Lightcast alongside government statistics and U.S. Census data to rank states and metro regions across seven equally-weighted metrics: overall job growth, growth in college-level jobs, growth in “blue collar” jobs, growth in “high earning” jobs, regional competitiveness, attraction of high earners and attraction of “prime age talent,” which is workers between the ages of 25 to 54.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies high-wage jobs in the Tampa Bay region as positions paying more than $66,477 a year, Lightcast's study says, and “large” metro areas have a population of at least 250,000 residents. Tampa Bay’s metropolitan statistical area includes all of  Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties.

“The Lightcast Talent Scorecard ranking underscores Tampa’s rapid growth and emergence as one of the nation’s most sought-after destinations for businesses seeking to expand, relocate and create high-wage career opportunities,” Craig Richard, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay EDC says in the agency’s announcement. 

For the second straight year, Florida, Texas and Idaho filled the top three spots, consecutively, in Lightcast’s state ranking for talent attraction. The top three large metropolitan areas on the list were Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Raleigh, North Carolina. 

Lightcast reported that the Tampa Bay area saw an increase over last year’s rankings in its ability to attract growth in its “prime age” population of workers between the ages of 25 and 54, boosting its overall score. The region also climbed to the No. 4 spot in Lightcast's individual ranking of large metro areas for high-wage job growth — a steep rise from Tampa Bay's No. 30 ranking on the list last year. 

The rankings reflect growth from 2019 through 2025, rather than jobs added in 2026 alone, the scorecard says. Lightcast retained a pre-pandemic baseline for this year’s analysis, which draws on its own labor market data and U.S. Census Bureau information. Its high-earning job growth measure tracks changes in the 200 occupations with the highest national average earnings, the scorecard says.