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- Atlanta is the US city with the fastest growth in people starting their own businesses, LinkedIn data shows.
- Atlanta was followed by Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago.
- The Georgia capital, which is positioning itself as a tech hub, is home to Delta, Coca Cola, and UPS.
Atlanta is the US city seeing the quickest growth in the number of people starting their own businesses, according to data from job-connection site LinkedIn.
Its analysis found that greater Atlanta was the leading US metro for recent business-formation growth.
LinkedIn ranked US metro areas by the growth in the number of people adding new founder positions to their profile from June to August 2023, compared to the same period in 2022. CNBC reported that there was a 92% growth in the number of people in Atlanta saying on their LinkedIn profile that they'd founded a business.
Atlanta was followed by Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago. The rest of the top 10 was made up of Boston, Miami-Fort Lauderdale, New York City, Los Angeles, and Denver.
More people now want to start their own business, data from Kauffman Foundation shows.
"2020's breakdown of normal work arrangements during the early stages of the COVID pandemic may have rekindled people's desire to run their own show," LinkedIn editor-at-large George Anders wrote.
Atlanta is 'enjoying a new dynamism'
The Atlanta metro area covers more than 8,500 square miles and has around 6.2 million residents, while Atlanta city has a population of around half a million.
Atlanta is home to a number of major US companies, including Delta Air Lines, Coca Cola, the Home Depot, UPS, Chick-fil-A, and CNN. The city is positioning itself as a tech hub, and Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Visa have all opened offices there in recent years.
Atlanta also has the world's busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which had 93.7 million passengers in 2022, according to the Airports Council International.
The Georgia capital is "enjoying a new dynamism that's prompting lots of aspiring entrepreneurs to start their businesses here," LinkedIn's Anders said. The National Association of Realtors named the Atlanta metro area the top market to watch in 2023 in its annual ranking, citing its affordability, "robust" job market, and migration.
Unemployment in the metro area is slightly below the US average and the proportion of people in the city aged 25 or older with a bachelors degree or higher is around two-thirds higher than the national average.