More than a quarter of residents in or near Detroit say they would want to work at Amazon if the company were to select their area for the site of its much anticipated second headquarters, and more than three quarters say that HQ2, as it is known, would be a good thing for their area.
These results make Detroit by far the most enthusiastic of Amazon’s HQ2 prospects among all large metropolitan areas in the United States.
These statistics come from the latest CNBC/SurveyMonkey Small Business Survey, conducted Nov. 20–Dec. 4. Though the quarterly survey focuses on small business owners, this iteration also asked 10,392 people across the U.S. who don’t own small businesses about their thoughts on Amazon.
Most people across the country are supportive of their region winning Amazon’s HQ2. More than half (55 percent) say this would “definitely” be a good thing for their area, while 38 percent say “possibly” and just 5 percent say “definitely not.”
But certain areas are more enthusiastic than others. We grouped respondents into “combined statistical areas,” which are geographic units defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget that combine metropolitan areas with surrounding areas that have commuting and economic ties to the more populous region. This type of analysis allows us to account for the fact that the arrival of Amazon HQ2 would impact not just the immediate city but the surrounding region as well, and it gives us a large enough sample size to do a nationwide analysis.
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If Jeff Bezos wants to ensure he will have enough of a workforce to start Amazon’s second headquarters, Detroit and Atlanta are the obvious places to start. In the Detroit area, 28 percent of people said they would “definitely” want to work for Amazon if the company brought its second headquarters to town.
In the Atlanta region, 26 percent of people said they would definitely want to work for Amazon, as did 24 percent of those in the Houston region, 23 percent of those in the Miami region and 23 percent of those in greater Los Angeles.
