Tech talent is experiencing a diaspora, according to Money magazine, driven by less-certain job prospects in Silicon Valley and high rents there and in other other coastal tech hubs. Job search site ZipRecruiter crunched its database of more than 8 million active jobs, ranking the 20 fastest-growing tech markets based on year-over-year data, and some surprising places came out on top. Phoenix was No. 3, just after Huntsville, Alabama, and Thousand Oaks, California.

Many of the cities on ZipRecruiter's list are in the Midwest, such as Kansas City, Kansas, Cincinnati and Indianapolis. The South also made a strong showing, with Nashville and three cities in Florida (Orlando, Jacksonville, Tampa) all making the top 20. Part of the reason is government policies, such as tax breaks for entrepreneurs and business startups. But the main impetus is the high cost of living in coastal tech hubs.

Since a year ago, the growth in tech jobs in metro Phoenix has been a whopping 188%, with early career median pay in the market at more than $54K/year, and mid-career pay at nearly $97K/year. The pay is less compared with the likes of Silicon Valley, but enough to live reasonably well in a lower-cost market. The top jobs in Phoenix tech are project manager, software engineer, software developer, data analyst and SQL developer, according to the ranking.