Find a Job You Really Want In
It’s no surprise that in a nation of 50 diverse states, each with their own policies, talent pool, and tax code, many companies often wonder if the grass is greener.
However, 2020 and 2021 in particular have highlighted that location can also influence how potential customers and job candidates view you– with some companies finding themselves the target of boycots after state policy changes.
To better understand the impact of state politics on companies based there, we hit the data to detect dramatic traffic changes on state location based articles.
The results? Controversy caused by state politics leads to a dramatic increase in traffic and interest to large companies based there.
Examples:
Above you can see the dramatic surge of interest in Texas large companies after they banned a majority of abortions.
Similarly, you can see people looking for Georgia companies following new restrictive voting laws.
How We Determined This
Zippia has a series of articles highlighting the largest companies in every state. They look like this: https://www.zippia.com/advice/largest-companies-in-texas/
The bulk of traffic each article receives is organic traffic and relatively stable day-over-day. To determine the impact of state politics, we looked at a year of Google search traffic for each article. Then sought to identify the cause/explanation for the rare, dramatic spikes.
Each was closely tied to a state level political change or controversy.
Unfortunately, all 50 states together sort of looks like 50 random lines, so we chose some recent (and jumpy!) graphs to illustrate this above.
What does this mean for companies?
Ultimately, it means many companies are forced to weather political controversy based on state policy changes- whether they like it or not. This may extend to customer boycotts, public relations issues, and other crises.
Some companies may flail in the face of these challenges or struggle to attract out of state talent who finds new policies distasteful.
However, by and large, these issues and public outrage seem to fade within 2 weeks or so– or at least the Google traffic does.
Author
Kathy is the head of content at Zippia with a knack for engaging audiences. Prior to joining Zippia, Kathy worked at Gateway Blend growing audiences across diverse brands. She graduated from Troy University with a degree in Social Science Education.
