Beijing Institute of Talent Development Strategy and Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management have released the 2024 edition of the Global City Talent Retention Index in cooperation with Nature Research Intelligence.
The Global City Talent Retention Index 2024 assesses the talent retention performance of 120 cities around the world from six dimensions: economy, innovation, culture and openness, environment and health, social welfare, and life quality.
The top 30 cities start with New York and end with Montreal. Beijing is fifth on the list that also includes Chicago, London, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Munich, Tel Aviv and Hong Kong.
The top 10 Chinese cities are Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan and Changsha.
European cities have generally performed well in city talent retention, showing a balanced pattern. Asian cities are varied, each with a distinctive pattern based on its own characteristics. U.S. cities have performed well in economy, innovation, culture and openness, forming a strong attraction for global talents.
Cities rely on high-level science and technology innovation platforms to attract and gather top-notch scientific and technological talents and produce high-level scientific and technological innovation outputs. The scientific and technological achievements in Chinese cities has benefited from excellent scientific research institutions. Chinese cities have set up high-level platforms for top scientists to produce high-quality scientific and technological achievements.
Beijing and San Francisco are far ahead in terms of the number of highly cited scientists, the ability to attract and gather top scientists, and the obvious advantages of scientific research location. The China research community, centered in Beijing, has an important influence in the world, and the intensity of research cooperation between Beijing and Shanghai ranks first in the world, playing a strong leading role in the global research network.
The European research cluster centered in London promotes global research and innovation through extensive collaboration with most cities within Europe.
The index report also indicates that distribution of global unicorn companies is highly correlated with the distribution of high-level talents, and the global landscape of unicorn companies demonstrated a trend of prompt growth, technological empowerment, and aggregation.
A unicorn is a startup company valued at over US $1 billion, privately owned and not listed on a share market.
Global unicorn companies are intensely aggregated spatially. Cities rich in education, technology and talent resources are also the cradle and highland for a large quantity of unicorn companies. Over 28 percent of the unicorn companies are gathered in San Francisco, New York, and Beijing, and 44.5 percent are based in the top 10 cities.
A strong economic base is the cornerstone for a city’s talent retention. Stimulating the full potential of innovation is a key factor in increasing talent retention, and the top-ranked cities tend to excel in innovation.
In today's increasingly active international talent mobility, an open and inclusive cultural atmosphere is a powerful driving factor for talent retention. The environment and health, social welfare and city talent retention show a strong positive correlation. A good ecological environment and perfect social welfare is an important guarantee to the improvement of a city’s talent retention.
In addition, it is worth noting that the higher the total score, the lower the score in the dimension of life quality, and the lower the talent's satisfaction with the city's life. This is mainly due to the rapid development of the city, which tends to raise the cost of living. A large concentration of the population also leads to a reduction in the quality of life.
Life quality has become the biggest obstacle for top cities to further enhance their talent retention. Focusing on the satisfaction of talents with the city and improving the quality of public life plays an important role in enhancing a city’s talent retention.
