Yelp workers flocked to Texas and Florida from New York and San Francisco after the company went fully remote

• The number of Yelp workers living in Florida and Texas grew four-fold between 2019 and 2022.
• And the share living near its offices in New York, Washington, DC, and Chicago fell by two-thirds.

Large numbers of Yelp employees moved to Texas and Florida after the company announced a shift to fully remote working.

Between the start of 2019 and the end of 2022, the number of workers at the online review site living in Florida and Texas grew four-fold, the company said in a report Tuesday.

Yelp said that the share of workers living near its San Francisco headquarters plummeted by 70% between 2019 and 2022, while the share living near its offices in New York, Washington, DC, and Chicago each fell by two-thirds. The share living near its Phoenix office fell by a third, Yelp added.

"Many of the employees we've spoken with moved away from former office locations to areas with a lower cost of living, with some individuals purchasing their first home or enjoying a slower place of life," Yelp chief people officer Carmen Whitney Orr told Bloomberg.

Yelp said in February 2021 that it was shifting to a remote-first model, then announced last June that it would go fully remote. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, a vocal advocate of remote work, said that employees were more satisfied when working from home and were "just as, if not more, productive."

Stoppelman said that only 1% of Yelp's workforce globally had been coming into the office each day and that its offices in New York, Chicago, and Washington DC were on average less than 2% full, making them its "most consistently underutilized offices." He said that the company was closing those three offices alongside reducing its footprint in Phoenix.

Yelp says it is now fully remote, though some roles require workers to live in certain areas of the US and within 50 miles of a major airport. It appears to still have access to its San Francisco HQ, which was earlier this month listed as its principal executives office in a financial filing.

The pandemic sparked a huge relocation of office workers to Florida and Texas as they were able to work remotely and benefit from a better climate, lower taxes, and a growing number of businesses opening up in the states.

Yelp said that its remote work policy means the company can access a "vastly larger talent pool" and attract more candidates.