Savills : Melbourne, Eindhoven and Seattle are the best cities for footloose tech workers - Savills

International real estate advisor Savills has identified that Melbourne in Australia, Eindhoven in the Netherlands, and Seattle in the US are the top three cities around the world for young tech talent to work from in its first 'Digital Nomad Essentials Index'.

Created as part of its Tech Cities 2021 programme, the Index (below) uses proxies - the cost of a flat white, a vegan burger, an Apple MacBook, fast broadband, flexible office space, some classic trainers, premium headphones and clean air - as some of the likely attributes and products you might find alongside a young tech worker, to help identify the locations that may be most desirable to tech talent and therefore the companies looking to recruit such employees.

Paul Tostevin, director and Tech Cities programme lead, Savills World Research, comments: 'Even before Covid-19, tech workers often had more flexibility to choose where they worked compared to many other sectors. With some of the biggest tech companies such as Google and Facebook saying that their workers can choose where they want to work from for most of 2021, and this possibly becoming a more permanent feature of the industry, this opens up a whole new realm of opportunities for staff who have the inclination and resources to try working from somewhere new. While our Digital Nomad Essentials Index is slightly tongue-in-cheek in terms of the products we've costed up, as no two workers are the same, factors like having access to affordable flexible workspace, fast broadband and, ever more importantly, clean air, are more universal and do indicate which locations may prove most popular with young tech workers and therefore if you're a tech start-up, where you may be able find the best staff.'