New in town? In these 10 metros, you'll make connections quickly

A while ago, a Mapquest blogger declared that New York City was the most unfriendly city in the United States. There’s so much “hustle and bustle,” the blogger wrote. Restaurants are expensive and living costs are steep. Not to mention the constant honking of taxi horns.

Yet to many New Yorkers, this frenzied tempo isn’t a flaw – it’s a feature. In the Big Apple, they say, you’ll find more meetups, more chances to do volunteer work and more classes where you can make connections. As for those high rents, they can be a plus, too, says SocialSelf founder David A. Morin . Just pick a group house that helps you mingle, he advises.

So who has the better side of this argument? Our Economic Graph data team is ready to referee this one, tapping into a nationwide analysis of LinkedIn connection formation within new geographies. This analysis covers more than three million LinkedIn members who relocated in 2021; it focuses on the first 12 months after newcomers settle into a fresh U.S. metro.?

As the chart below shows, the greater New York City area claims the top spot. That’s where newcomers add LinkedIn connections at a rate 11.1 times beyond the national average – outpacing every other metro.??

As of 2022, the New York metro area contained a nation-leading 19.6 million people , more than six million ahead of the next largest: metro Los Angeles. Not only does that create more possible pairings for New Yorkers, it also represents a uniquely deep concentration of talent in fields such as finance, media and the arts. For professionals in those areas, NYC is an especially fruitful place to expand industry-specific contacts.?

Just ask financial strategist Connor Frischmeyer , cofounder of Auxo Partners , who’s returning to New York City after working remotely in California and Mexico. “Personally I love New York,” he says. “There are so many great entrepreneurs to work with, and it’s much easier to build trust if we’re meeting in person.”

A year from now, Frischmeyer expects, his network also will include like-minded people who enjoy weekend runs, or checking out Spanish-language comedians. To him, New Yorkers’ vast diversity of backgrounds just makes for a more exciting city to live in.?

Mingling and making connections is a way of life in the San Francisco Bay Area, too, where newcomers’ rate of adding LinkedIn connections (9.5x the national rate) is the second highest in the United States.?

The Bay Area is home to well-known startup accelerators such as Y Combinator , which are built to foster networking among participants. For entrepreneurs who can’t break into the Y Combinator circle, there are more than 400 other professional networking businesses on the West Coast, chiefly in or near San Francisco, according to Crunchbase.?

Third-ranked Salt Lake City (with a new-connection rate that’s 9.2x the national average) benefits from Utah’s unique statewide culture. For example, 44.9% of Utah adults say they participate in neighborhood activities – more than double the national rate. Some 51% of Utahns say they attend church regularly, the highest statewide level in the country.?

As a result, even though Salt Lake is the smallest metro area on the top-10 list, its population of slightly more than 1.2 million is enough to support brisk network building.

Most of the remaining top-10 metros – such as Los Angeles Chicago, Washington, D.C., Houston,? Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Dallas-Fort Worth – earn rankings closely in line with their metro size. Greater Boston is a slight exception; it ranks fifth in terms of its connection rate (8.6 times the national average) even though it’s only 11th in terms of population.?

Other findings of note:?

• The fastest growth in LinkedIn members’ overall pace for adding connections – including ones outside their new metros –? occurred in their first two months after migrating. By the third month, this connection rate stabilized at about half their initial level.
• Men made an average of 30.5% more connections overall than women, when settling into a new metro.
• The youngest workforce cohort, Gen Z (born in 1997 or later) showed the fastest connection rate when analyzing interactions strictly within new metros. Specifically, Gen Zers averaged 13.6% more connections than millennials (born in the 1981-1996 interval). Gen Z’s edge widened to 17.9% versus Gen Xers (born in the 1965-1980 interval) and 48.5% versus baby boomers (born in the 1946 to 1964 interval.)?

Methodology:?

A migration instance occurs when members change their location on their LinkedIn profile. This analysis tracks connections made in the first year after internal U.S. migrations that occurred during 2021. Monthly new connections in each metro are compared against the all-U.S. average. Student migrations – before studies started, during student years and immediately after graduation – are excluded, so that the analysis focuses on the workforce population.

LinkedIn data scientist Caroline Liongosari contributed to this analysis.