The Geography of Hiring: Where 13,000 Companies Are Actually Recruiting

The internet promised a borderless job market. Work from anywhere. Apply globally. Geography is dead.

Then look at where companies actually post jobs.

Nox tracks 401,143 active job listings across 13,238 companies and 19 applicant tracking systems. Every listing has a location field. When aggregated, the picture is stark: hiring concentrates in a handful of places, and the gap between where people want to work and where companies post jobs is enormous.

The US Accounts for Nearly Half

Of 401,143 tracked listings, 183,673 are in the United States -- 45.8% of the global total.

The drop-off from first to second place is roughly 13.5x:

These are not exclusively American companies. The 13,238 employers span dozens of countries. Yet nearly half of all positions funnel into a single market.

Inside the US: The Usual Suspects Still Dominate

San Francisco anchors the Bay Area's continued dominance. Despite years of narrative about tech's migration, the city maintains the highest density of enterprise tech companies -- 79 enterprise tech unicorns by recent counts -- and the startup ecosystem generates openings at an unmatched pace.

New York pulls in fintech, media tech, ad tech, and marketing technology. Its advantage is breadth: financial institutions, media conglomerates, and venture-backed startups all post through ATS platforms.

Austin continues its ascent. The city's tech workforce represents 13% of total employment, with projected 4.4% annual growth. Corporate relocations (Oracle, Tesla, Google, Dell, IBM) and a cost of living undercutting the coasts have turned it into a genuine second-tier hub.

But emerging hubs are gaining ground faster. San Antonio leads all US metros at 5.1% annual tech workforce growth. Raleigh-Durham follows at 4.7%, Phoenix at 4.6%, Nashville at 4.3%. These cities offer 30-45% cost advantages over traditional centers.

The International Landscape

The UK's 13,537 listings reflect London's role as Europe's primary English-language tech market, but UK hiring is declining -- down 21% year-over-year even as it maintains the highest absolute hiring rate (32%) across European markets.

Germany is the only major European market showing positive hiring growth, up 3% year-over-year. Its 6,325 listings skew toward enterprise software, manufacturing tech, and automotive.

India's 9,610 listings underrepresent actual hiring pace. India's startup hiring surged 32% year-over-year, with top IT firms planning to onboard 82,000 graduates in FY2026. Much of this occurs through internal systems rather than the western ATS platforms Nox tracks.

The Remote Gap

According to Robert Half's 2026 research, only 16% of professionals say their top choice is fully in-office. Fifty-five percent prefer hybrid. Twenty-nine percent want full remote. Separate surveys show 85% of job seekers rank remote work as the factor most likely to make them apply.

The supply side: across the US labor market, 87% of open positions are fully in-office. Seven percent hybrid. Six percent remote.

Nearly nine out of ten posted jobs are office-based, but fewer than two in ten candidates prefer office work. Fully remote listings attract 2.6x as many applications as in-person jobs, creating intense competition for a sliver of opportunity.

Even within tech -- the industry most associated with remote work -- 58% of roles are fully on-site, 29% hybrid, 13% remote.

The Geographic Paradox of Remote Work

Detroit offers the highest percentage of fully remote roles at 8%. Oregon leads at the state level with 10%. San Francisco and Chicago each sit at 6%. New York manages only 4%.

At the other extreme, Sun Belt cities that attracted corporate relocations are the most in-office: San Antonio at 92%, Houston at 89%, San Diego at 88%. The cities gaining the most jobs offer the least flexibility in how those jobs are performed.

The markets with the most total openings (New York, San Francisco) have low remote percentages but high absolute remote numbers. Markets with the highest remote percentages (Detroit, Portland) have smaller overall pools. The competition dynamics change depending on whether candidates look at percentages or absolutes.

The Relocation Calculus

The traditional advice -- move to where the jobs are -- has become more nuanced.

Sixty-nine percent of workers say they would accept a pay cut for remote work, an 11-point increase from 2024. Seventy-six percent say they would look for a new job if their employer eliminated remote work.

The emerging hubs -- Austin, Raleigh, Phoenix, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Denver -- offer salaries that, adjusted for cost of living, often exceed traditional centers. A software engineer in Raleigh earning 80% of a San Francisco salary but paying 45% less for housing faces an inverted effective compensation gap.

What This Means for Job Seekers

The volume play is in the US. With 45.8% of global listings, American job seekers have the largest accessible pool. International candidates with US work authorization have a structural advantage.

Remote is competitive, not abundant. Filtering exclusively for remote means competing in the smallest, most contested segment. Filtering for hybrid in target metros nearly triples the pool while preserving most flexibility.

Geography is a scoring factor, not a binary. Most ATS platforms allow location-based filtering, and companies configure listings with location preferences. Candidates whose locations match a company's office footprint receive implicit advantages in many ATS ranking algorithms.

The map of where jobs are posted and the map of where people want to work have never been further apart.

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Sources

• Nox internal dataset: 401,143 listings across 19 ATS platforms and 13,238 employers
• Robert Half, 2026 Workforce Research
• CompTIA Cyberstates, Tech Workforce Growth by Metro
• FlexJobs, Remote Work Statistics (2025-2026)
• CB Insights, Unicorn Companies

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