This touristy beach town is now one of the top US remote work hubs

Lori Matthias and her husband had tired of Atlanta traffic when they moved to St.Augustine, Florida, in 2023.

For Mike Waldron and his wife, moving from the Boston area in 2020 to a place that bills itself as “the nation’s oldest city” was motivated by a desire to be closer to their adult children.They were among thousands of white-collar, remote workers who migrated to the St.Augustine area in recent years, transforming the touristy beach town into one of the top remote work hubs in the United States.Matthias fell in love with St.

Augustine’s small town feeling, trading the hour-long commute she had in Atlanta for bumping into friends and acquaintances while running errands.“The whole pace here is slower and I’m attracted to that,” said Matthias, who does sales and marketing for a power tool company.“My commute is like 30 steps from my kitchen to my office.

It’s just different.It’s just relaxed and friendly.”Centuries before becoming a remote work hub, the St.

Augustine area was claimed by the Spanish crown in the early 16th century after explorer Juan Ponce de Leon’s arrival.In modern times, it is best known for its Spanish architecture of terra cotta roofs and arched doorways, tourist-carrying trollies, a historic fort, an alligator farm, lighthouses and a shipwreck museum.In St.

Johns County, home to St.Augustine, the percentage of workers who did their jobs from home nearly tripled from 8.6% in 2018 to almost 24% in 2023, moving the northeast Florida county into the top ranks of US counties with the largest share of people working remotely, according to US Census Bureau figures.Only counties with a heavy presence of tech, finance and government workers in metro Washington, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte and Dallas, as well as two counties in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, had a larger share of their workforce working from home.

But these were counties much more populous than the 335,000 residents in St.Johns County, which ha...