ADP data shows how long-distance working relationships are concentrating leadership in metro areas with expensive housing.

Collaborating on work from different places is nothing new, but the normalization of remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic has helped take the phenomenon to a whole new level, a shift that ADP data is uniquely well positioned to study.

Economic and political power has historically been concentrated in a small number of command-and-control cities, which serve as nerve centers for business, ideas, and influence. In recent decades, a growing regional divide between costly and affordable U.S. cities has been joined by technological innovations that make it easier for people in different places to collaborate.

Throughout history, economic and political power has concentrated in key cities, hubs of business, technology, ideas, and influence that thrive as command-and-control centers of the broader economy. Now a transformation is underway.