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    Supply Chain Woes Prompt a New Push to Revive U.S. Factories

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    Companies are testing whether the United States can regain some of the manufacturing output it ceded in recent decades to China and other countries.When visitors arrive at the office of America Knits in tiny Swainsboro, Ga., the first thing they see on the wall is a black-and-white photo that a company co-founder, Steve Hawkins, discovered in a local antiques store.It depicts one of a score of textile mills that once dotted the area, along with the workers that toiled on its machines and powered the local economy. The scene reflects the heyday — and to Mr. Hawkins, the potential — of making clothes in the rural South.Companies like America Knits will test whether the United States can regain some of the manufacturing output it ceded in recent decades to China and other countries. That question has been contentious among workers whose jobs were lost to globalization. But with the supply-chain snarls resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, it has become intensely tangible from the consumer viewpoint as well.Mr. Hawkins’s company, founded in 2019, has 65 workers producing premium T-shirts from locally grown cotton. He expects the work force to increase to 100 in the coming months. If the area is to have an industrial renaissance, it is so far a lonely one. “I’m the only one, the only crazy one,” Mr. Hawkins said.But as he sees it, bringing manufacturing back from overseas — a move often called onshoring or reshoring — has found its moment. “America Knits shows it can be done and has been done,” he said.Some corporate giants are keen on testing that premise, if not for finished goods then certainly for essential parts.General Motors disclosed in December that it was considering spending upward of $4 billion to expand electric vehicle and battery production in Michigan. Just days later, Toyota announced plans for a $1.3 billion battery plant in North Carolina that will employ 1,750 people.At America Knits in Swainsboro, Ga., workers earn up to twice as much per hour as they would in a service job.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesIn October, Micron Technology said it planned to invest more than $150 billion in memory chip manufacturing and research and development over the next decade, with a portion of that to be spent in the United States. And in November, the South Korean giant Samsung said that it would build a $17 billion semiconductor plant in Texas, its largest U.S. investment to date.Bringing manufacturing back to the United States was a major theme of former President Donald J. Trump, who imposed tariffs on imports from allies and rivals, started a trade war with China and blocked or reworked trade agreements. Still, there was little change in the balance of trade or the inclination of companies operating in China to redirect investment to the United States..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Since the pandemic began, however, efforts to relocate manufacturing have accelerated, said Claudio Knizek, global leader for advanced manufacturing and mobility at EY-Parthenon, a strategy consulting firm. “It may have reached a tipping point,” he added.Decades of dependence on Asian factories, especially in China, has been upended by delays and surging freight rates — when shipping capacity can be found at all.Backups at overwhelmed ports and the challenges of obtaining components as well as finished products in a timely way have convinced companies to think about locating production capacity closer to buyers.“It’s absolutely about being close to customers,” said Tim Ingle, group vice president for enterprise strategy at Toyota Motor North America. “It’s a big endeavor, but it’s the future.”New corporate commitments to sustainability are also playing a role, with the opportunity to reduce pollution and fossil fuel consumption in transportation across oceans emerging as a selling point.Repositioning the supply chain isn’t just an American phenomenon, however. Experts say the trend is also encouraging manufacturing in northern Mexico, a short hop to the United States by truck.Called near-shoring, the move to Mexico is paralleled in Europe with factories opening in Eastern Europe to serve Western European markets like France and Germany.“We’re starting to see it in Mexico as well as in the U.S.,” said Theresa Wagler, chief financial officer of Steel Dynamics, a steel maker based in Fort Wayne, Ind. “Many companies now prefer security of supply over cost.”Mr. Knizek of EY-Parthenon expects industries with complex and more expensive products to lead the resurgence, including automobiles, semiconductors, defense and aviation and pharmaceuticals. Anything that requires large amounts of manual labor, or that is difficult to automate, is much less likely to return.For items like shoes or furniture or holiday lights, for example, “the economics are daunting,” said Willy C. Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School. “It’s hard to beat wages of $2.50 an hour.”Although trade tensions and shipping delays are making headlines, Professor Shih added, China retains huge advantages, like a mammoth work force, easy access to raw materials and low-cost factories. “For a lot of what American consumers buy, there aren’t a lot of good alternatives,” he added.But as the moves by auto and tech companies show, the United States can attract more sophisticated manufacturing. That has been a goal shared by Republican and Democratic administrations, including President Biden’s, which supports $52 billion in subsidies for domestic chip manufacturing.“Incentives to help level the playing field are a key piece,” said David Moore, chief strategy officer and senior vice president at Micron. “Building a leading-edge memory fabrication facility is a sizable investment; it’s not just a billion or two here and there. These are major decisions.”In the aftermath of the coronavirus and restrictions on exports of goods like masks, moving manufacturing closer to home is also being viewed as a national security priority, said Rick Burke, a managing director with the consulting firm Deloitte.“As the pandemic continues, there’s a realization that this may be the new normal,” Mr. Burke said. “The pandemic has sent a shock wave through organizations. It’s no longer a discussion about cost, but about supply-chain resiliency.”Despite the big announcements and the billions being spent, it could take until the late 2020s before the investments yield a meaningful number of manufacturing jobs, Mr. Burke said — and even then, raw materials and some components will probably come from overseas.Still, if the experts are correct, these moves could reverse decades of dwindling employment in American factories. A quarter of a century ago, U.S. factories employed more than 17 million people, but that number dropped to 11.5 million by 2010.Since then, the gains have been modest, with the total manufacturing work force now at 12.5 million.But the sector remains one of the few where the two-thirds of Americans who lack a college degree can earn a middle-class wage. In bigger cities and parts of the country where workers are unionized, factories frequently pay $20 to $25 an hour compared with $15 or less for jobs at warehouses or in restaurants and bars.Even in the rural South, long resistant to unions, manufacturing jobs can come with a healthy salary premium. At America Knits, a private-label manufacturer that sells to retailers including J. Crew and Buck Mason, workers earn $12 to $15 an hour, compared with $7.50 to $11 in service jobs.The hiring is being driven by strong demand for the company’s T-shirts, Mr. Hawkins said, as well as by a recognition among retailers of the effect of supply-chain problems on foreign sources of goods.“Retailers have opened their eyes more and are bringing manufacturing back,” he said. “And with premium T-shirts selling for $30 or more, they can afford to.”A few years ago, Julie Land said she would naturally have looked to Asia to expand production of outerwear and other goods for her Canadian company, Winnipeg Stitch Factory, and its clothing brand, Pine Falls.Instead, the 12-year-old business is opening a plant in Port Gibson, Miss., in 2022. Fabric will be cut in Winnipeg and then shipped to Port Gibson to be sewn into garments like jackets and sweaters. The factory will be heavily automated, Ms. Land said, enabling her company to keep costs manageable and compete with overseas workshops.“Reshoring is not going to happen overnight, but it is happening, and it’s exciting,” she said. “If you place an order offshore, there is so much uncertainty with a longer lead time. All of that adds up.” More

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    Are Tesla and Texas a Perfect Match? It’s Questionable.

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    While its C.E.O., Elon Musk, and the state’s conservative lawmakers share libertarian sensibilities, they differ greatly on climate change and renewable energy.Tesla’s move from Silicon Valley to Texas makes sense in many ways: The company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, and the conservative lawmakers who run the state share a libertarian philosophy, favoring few regulations and low taxes. Texas also has room for a company with grand ambitions to grow.“There’s a limit to how big you can scale in the Bay Area,” Mr. Musk said Thursday at Tesla’s annual meeting hosted at its new factory near the Texas capital. “Here in Austin, our factory’s like five minutes from the airport, 15 minutes from downtown.”But Texas may not be the natural choice that Mr. Musk makes it out to be.Tesla’s stated mission is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” and its customers include many people who want sporty cars that don’t spew greenhouse gases from their tailpipes. Texas, however, is run by conservatives who are skeptical of or oppose efforts to address climate change. They are also fiercely protective of the state’s large oil and gas industry.And, despite the state’s business-friendly reputation, Tesla can’t sell vehicles directly to customers there because of a law that protects car dealerships, which Tesla does not use.Tesla’s move is not surprising: Mr. Musk threatened to leave California in May 2020 after local officials, citing the coronavirus, forced Tesla to shut down its car factory in the San Francisco Bay Area. But his decision to move to Texas highlights some gaping ideological contradictions. His company stands at the vanguard of the electric car and renewable energy movement, while Texas’ lawmakers, who have welcomed him enthusiastically, are among the biggest resisters to moving the economy away from oil and natural gas.“It’s always a feather in Texas’ hat when it takes a business away from California, but Tesla is as much unwelcome as it is welcome,” said Jim Krane, an energy expert at Rice University in Houston. “It’s an awkward juxtaposition. This is a state that gets a sizable chunk of its G.D.P. from oil and gas and here comes a virulent competitor to that industry.”In February, a rare winter storm caused the Texas electric grid to collapse, leaving millions of people without electricity and heat for days. Soon after, the state’s leaders sought — falsely, according to many energy experts — to blame the blackout on renewable energy.“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Gov. Greg Abbott said of the blackout on Fox News. “It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states to make sure we will be able to heat our homes in the wintertimes and cool our homes in the summertimes.”Mr. Musk, a Texas resident since last year, seemed to offer a very different take on Thursday, suggesting that renewable energy could in fact protect people from power outages.“I was actually in Austin for that snowstorm in a house with no electricity, no lights, no power, no heating, no internet,” he said. “This went on for several days. However, if we had the solar plus Powerwall, we would have had lights and electricity.”Tesla is a leading maker of solar panels and batteries — the company calls one of its products Powerwall — for homeowners and businesses to store renewable energy for use when the sun has gone down, when electricity rates are higher or during blackouts. The company reported $1.3 billion in revenue from the sale of solar panels and batteries in the first six months of the year.Mr. Musk’s announcement that Tesla would be moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, Calif., came with few details. It is not clear, for example, how many workers would move to Austin. It’s also unknown whether the company would maintain a research and development operation in California in addition to its factory in Fremont, which is a short drive from headquarters and which it said it would expand. The company has around 750 employees in Palo Alto and about 12,500 in total in the Bay Area, according to the Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies.It is also not clear how much money Tesla will save on taxes by moving. Texas has long used its relatively low taxes, which are less than California’s, to attract companies. County officials have already approved tax breaks for the company’s new factory, and the state might offer more.Over the years, California granted Tesla hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks, something that Gov. Gavin Newsom noted on Friday. But because Tesla will continue to have operations in California, it may still have to pay income tax on its sales in the state, said Kayla Kitson, a policy analyst at the California Budget & Policy Center.Whatever incentives they offer Tesla, Texas officials are not likely to change their support for the fossil fuel industries with which the company competes.In a letter to state regulators in July, Mr. Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission to incentivize the state’s energy market “to foster development and maintenance of adequate and reliable sources of power, like natural gas, coal and nuclear power.”A Tesla factory under construction in Austin in September.Joe White/ReutersThe governor also ordered regulators to charge suppliers of wind and solar energy “reliability” fees because, given the natural variability of the wind and the sun, suppliers could not guarantee that they would be able to provide power when it was needed.Mr. Abbott’s letter made no mention of battery storage, suggesting that he saw no role for a technology that many energy experts believe will become increasingly important in smoothing out wind and solar energy production. Tesla is a big player in such batteries. Its systems have helped electric grids in California, Australia and elsewhere, and the company is building a big battery in Texas, too, Bloomberg reported in March.Texas has no clean energy mandates, though it has become a national leader in the use of solar and wind power — driven largely by the low cost of renewable energy. The state produces more wind energy than any other.Another issue that divides Tesla and Texas is the state’s law about how cars can be sold there.As in some other states, Texas has long had laws to protect car dealers by barring automakers, including Tesla, from selling directly to consumers. California, the company’s biggest market by far, has long allowed the company to sell cars directly to buyers, which lets it earn more money than if it had to sell through dealers.Tesla has showrooms around Texas, but employees are not even allowed to discuss prices with prospective buyers and the showrooms cannot accept orders. Texans can buy Teslas online and pick the vehicles up at its service centers.Once the Austin factory starts producing vehicles, including a new pickup truck Tesla calls Cybertruck, those vehicles will have to leave the state before they can be delivered to customers in Texas.Efforts to change the law by Tesla and some state lawmakers have gone nowhere, including during the legislative session that concluded this year. That’s partly because car dealers have tremendous political influence in the state.Perhaps once Tesla has moved to Austin and started producing cars, Mr. Musk might have enough political clout to get the Legislature to act. Texas lawmakers typically meet only every two years, however, so it would most likely take at least until 2023 for the company’s customers to receive a car directly from its factory there.Michael Webber, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, said Mr. Musk’s decision to move to Texas might have been influenced in part by the ability to pressure the state to change its law.“The Texas car market is the second-largest car market in America after California, so if you are selling cars it kind of makes sense to get closer to your customers,” Mr. Webber said. “The Texas car market is particularly difficult outside of cities because of the legislative barriers.”There were already signs on Friday that some in Texas, including those involved in oil and gas and related industries, were happy to have Tesla because it could eventually employ thousands of people.“It can only be positive for Texas, because it brings more business to Texas,” said Linda Salinas, vice president for operations at Texmark Chemicals, which is near Houston. “Even though it’s not fossil business, it’s still business.”She said Texmark might even benefit from Tesla’s manufacturing operations in the state. “Texmark produces and sells mining chemicals to people who mine copper, and guess what batteries are made out of?”Peter Eavis More

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    Tech Workers Who Swore Off the Bay Area Are Coming Back

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    SAN FRANCISCO — Last year, Greg Osuri decided he’d had enough of the Bay Area. Between smoke-choked air from nearby wildfires and the coronavirus lockdown, it felt as if the walls of his apartment in San Francisco’s Twin Peaks neighborhood were closing in on him.“It was just a hellhole living here,” said Mr. Osuri, 38, the founder and chief executive of a cloud-computing company called Akash Network. He decamped for his sister’s roomy townhouse in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, joining an exodus of technology workers from the crowded Bay Area.But by March, Mr. Osuri was itching to return. He missed the serendipity of city life: meeting new people, running into acquaintances on the street and getting drinks with colleagues. “The city is full of that — opportunities that you may never have expected would come your way,” Mr. Osuri said. He moved back to San Francisco in April.The pandemic was supposed to lead to a great tech diaspora. Freed of their offices and after-work klatches, the Bay Area’s tech workers were said to be roaming America, searching for a better life in cities like Miami and Austin, Texas — where the weather is warmer, the homes are cheaper and state income taxes don’t exist.But dire warnings over the past year that tech was done with the Bay Area because of a high cost of living, homelessness, crowding and crime are looking overheated. Mr. Osuri is one of a growing number of industry workers already trickling back as a healthy local rate of coronavirus vaccinations makes fall return-to-office dates for many companies look likely.“I think people were pretty noisy about quitting the Bay Area,” said Eric Bahn, a co-founder of an early-stage Palo Alto, Calif., investment firm, Hustle Fund. “But they’ve been very quiet in admitting they want to move back.”Bumper-to-bumper traffic has returned to the region’s bridges and freeways. Tech commuter buses are reappearing on the roads. Rents are spiking, especially in San Francisco neighborhoods where tech employees often live.Twitter reopened its headquarters in San Francisco on Monday. The company plans to open more offices in the Bay Area.Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesAnd on Monday, Twitter reopened its office, becoming one of the first big tech companies to welcome more than skeleton crews of employees back to the workplace. Twitter employees wearing backpacks and puffy jackets on a cold San Francisco summer morning greeted old friends and explored a space redesigned to accommodate social-distancing measures.London Breed, San Francisco’s mayor, said she welcomed the return of tech workers, though she acknowledged that it also brought challenges. “Yes, we need to do the work to build more housing and address the many challenges that big cities face, but San Francisco is successful when we have a growing economy, and that includes tech,” she said in a statement.No one is quite ready to declare that things have returned to normal. Ridership on Bay Area Rapid Transit remains low, and nearly half of San Francisco’s small businesses are still closed. Office vacancy rates are high. The city’s downtown is still largely empty on weekdays.But recent data supports the notion that tech workers are coming back. In an area near San Francisco’s Financial District, where tech workers tend to cluster, average apartment rental prices dropped more than 20 percent in 2020, according to census and Zillow data compiled by the city. That area saw the biggest price jumps in the city in the first five months of 2021.In the bayside ZIP code surrounding the San Francisco Giants’ Oracle Park, where nearly 15 percent of residents worked in tech, average monthly rental prices dropped from $3,956 in February 2020 to about $3,000 a year later. They rose to $3,312 in May, according to Zillow data.“This could mean that tech workers are coming back, although it could also mean that other people, who also value those areas, are taking advantage of the lower rents to move in,” said Ted Egan, San Francisco’s chief economist.Median San Francisco home prices, which bottomed out at a still-jarring $1.58 million for a single-family home in December, recently hit $1.9 million, according to the California Association of Realtors. That’s higher than before the pandemic.Traffic this month on a highway leading toward downtown San Francisco and the Bay Bridge.Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesNearly 1.4 million cars drove across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco in May, the most since February 2020, and afternoon freeway speeds have dropped to about 30 miles per hour, which was the prepandemic norm, according to city data. Some types of crime are close to prepandemic levels.Rizal Wong, a junior associate at the tech and business communications firm Sard Verbinnen and Company, left the Bay Area in December, trading a studio apartment in Oakland for a cheaper one-bedroom in his hometown, Sacramento, close to his family. But after getting vaccinated, he moved to San Francisco in April.“I felt like I was getting back to my life,” said Mr. Wong, 22. “Meeting up with co-workers who were also vaccinated and getting drinks after work, it definitely makes it feel more normal.”Mr. Wong, like many who left the Bay Area, didn’t go very far. Of the more than 170,000 people who moved from the vicinity of San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland in 2020, the vast majority relocated elsewhere in California, according to United States Postal Service change-of-address data analyzed by CBRE, a real estate company.About 20,000 moved to the San Jose area, for example. A further 16,000 went to Los Angeles, nearly 15,000 to Sacramento and 8,000 to Stockton, in California’s Central Valley. The more than 77,000 people who left the San Jose metro area, a proxy for Silicon Valley, went to similar places: San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles. In February, The San Francisco Chronicle reported similar numbers using Postal Service data.The net migration out of the San Francisco and San Jose regions — that takes into account people who moved in — was about 116,000 last year, up from about 64,000 in 2019, according to the analysis of the Postal Service data.Nearly every year for several decades, thousands more residents have left Silicon Valley and San Francisco than moved in, according to state data. Often, this movement is offset by an influx of immigrants from other countries — which was limited during the pandemic.Greg Osuri, center, and his employees meeting in their co-working space, Shack15.Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesThe majority of those who left the Bay last year, the real-estate firm’s analysis found, were young, affluent and highly educated — a demography that describes many tech workers. It’s a group that wants urban amenities like bars, restaurants and retail shopping, said Eric Willett, CBRE’s director of research.“That’s the group that left urban centers in large numbers,” he said. It is also the group “that we are increasingly seeing move back.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}There were some prominent industry defections from the Bay Area over the last 18 months. Oracle and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise moved their headquarters to Texas. The software maker Palantir moved its headquarters from Palo Alto to Colorado. Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, said he was moving to Austin.“CA has the winning-for-too-long problem,” Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter in October. “Like a sports team with many championships, it is increasingly difficult to avoid complacency & a sense of entitlement.”Miami’s mayor, Francis X. Suarez, campaigned to lure tech workers to his city, and he was joined by some high-profile investors who said they had found a better life in South Florida. But the analysis of Postal Service data found that Austin was the 13th-most-popular destination for people leaving San Francisco. Miami was 22nd.Also not as well noticed in the exodus headlines: Oracle and HPE told most Bay Area employees that they would not need to leave.Now some companies are expanding their Bay Area footprints. Google said in March that it would spend $1 billion on California developments this year, including two office complexes in Mountain View. The company is also building a massive, mixed-use development that includes a 7.3-million-square-foot office space in San Jose. In September, Google will reopen its doors to employees. Most will come in three days a week.Twitter is also opening a 30,000-square-foot office in San Jose’s Santana Row this fall and an Oakland building next year, said Jennifer Christie, the company’s chief human resources officer.The share of Twitter’s work force in San Francisco declined to 35 percent last month, from 45 percent a year earlier, as the company grew quickly elsewhere, Ms. Christie said. But the total number of Bay Area employees is similar: about 2,200, compared with 2,300 last year.About 45 percent of employees at Twitter said they wanted to return to the office at least part time, Ms. Christie said, but she expects that number to grow. “I do think there’s a good number of people who still want to be in the San Francisco area,” she said.At Cisco Systems, a tech gear maker that is one of San Jose’s biggest employers, just 23 percent of employees want to return to the office three or more days each week. But many who prefer to work remotely will do so from nearby, said Fran Katsoudas, the company’s chief people officer. People have expressed a desire for work flexibility “more than a desire to have a different location,” she said.San Francisco’s Embarcadero, along the waterfront.Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesSome tech workers have found compromises — or at least a way to avoid long commutes. Annette Nguyen, 23, who works for Google’s ad marketing team, appreciated the outdoor space and lack of a commute when she moved from San Francisco last year to live with her parents in Irvine, Calif. She plans to return to the Bay Area in August, but will live near her office in Silicon Valley.“I couldn’t imagine spending three hours a day commuting anymore like I used to,” she said.Of course, some of the people who moved away are gone for good. Others are still in the process of leaving.Steve Wozniak, who founded Apple with Steve Jobs, said he and his wife had recently bought a house in a Denver suburb, Castle Pines, and would likely live there at least part time. He was eager, he said, to fulfill a lifelong dream of living close to the Colorado snow and away from the California crowds.“I don’t think people want to go back full time when they have the sort of job that can work well from home,” Mr. Wozniak, who currently lives in Los Gatos, Calif., said in an interview. “We’ve learned something that you really can’t take back.” More

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    Upended by the Pandemic, Haute Chefs Move Into Hotels

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    Hotels not necessarily known for fine dining are drawing award-winning chefs seeking opportunities for reinvention. Yogis and nature enthusiasts have long flocked to Ojai, a verdant mountain enclave 90 minutes north of Los Angeles — gastronomes, not so much. That changed during the pandemic, when the Ojai Valley Inn turned its sprawling, indoor-outdoor farmhouse — formally a wedding venue before the coronavirus upended plans — into a stage for a revolving cast of high-end chefs.Among the marquee names: Christopher Kostow, the executive chef of California’s three-Michelin-starred paragon of fine dining, the Restaurant at Meadowood. Located more than 400 miles to the north in Napa Valley, it burned down in a September wildfire. “That, on top of Covid, gave us this feeling like, ‘God only knows what’s going to happen next,’” Mr. Kostow said.To pay his staff, Mr. Kostow would have to set up shop elsewhere. Before the fire, he’d had the foresight to look into a Plan B outside Napa, aware that constantly shifting restrictions could keep businesses in wine country shuttered while other parts of the state were open.It turned out that Howard Backen, the same architect responsible for the plush environs of Meadowood, had also recently built the Ojai Valley Inn’s Farmhouse, equipped with an open kitchen and state-of-the-art Viking appliances. One call led to another, and Mr. Kostow and his team decided to temporarily shift their operations to Ojai, where they engineered a tasting menu of can’t-cook-this-at-home delights like “champagne-bubbled” oysters and caviar dressed with eucalyptus and broccoli.“I hadn’t been to Ojai before,” said Mr. Kostow. “It’s like what I imagine California might have been like in the 1930s: rolling hills, rustic, really bucolic.”The partnership between the Restaurant at Meadowood and the Ojai Valley Inn exemplifies an accelerating trend: in the wake of the pandemic, hotels have become havens for high-end chefs. Whether displaced by disaster, like Mr. Kostow, seeking to make up for lost revenue, wanting to explore new markets or simply craving an opportunity to try out new things, well-regarded chefs are flocking to hotels not necessarily known for their cuisine. Last year chewed up and spit out the fine-dining playbook: now, there’s an opportunity for reinvention.Christopher Kostow, the executive chef of California’s three-Michelin-starred paragon of fine dining, the Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley, recently presided over sold-out dinners at the Ojai Valley Inn’s Farmhouse. Ojai Valley Inn“Serving outside on a lawn or in a space that’s not your own is not ideal, but it does make you scratch your head, like, ‘Oh, this is cool. What other cool things could we be doing?’” said Mr. Kostow, who also owns a more casual eatery, The Charter Oak, in Napa Valley. “I think the result, post-pandemic, regarding fine dining, will be more license, more fluidity. All the old rules are blown up, at this point.”“The Restaurant at Meadowood Residency” began on March 3. Over the course of five weeks, it got the culinary equivalent of a standing ovation: all 44 dinners Mr. Kostow presided over at the Ojai Farmhouse sold out, including a finale weekend of meals in May that featured wine pairings from the renowned Krug Champagne house and Harlan Estate, a famed Napa Valley producer of Bordeaux-style blends. Tickets for that dinner cost $999 per person.“They sold out within the first hour,” said Ben Kephart, the Ojai Valley Inn’s director of operations. “It’s crazy. That’s about as much as you can charge for a dinner anywhere. It shows you how much of a demand there is, and it speaks to people wanting to get out and support a venture that they feel is deserving.”One of Mr. Kostow’s March dinners in Ojai offered 13 courses, several pours of wine, and, maybe most importantly, the opportunity to dress up and people watch (from well over six feet away). It felt like the opposite of sitting on the couch, numbly chewing Postmates by the glow of Netflix. Apparently, people want that.“We could have had a month of these dinners, straight,” said Mr. Kephart. “That’s how many people tried to book them.”Besides Mr. Kostow, the Farmhouse has played host to chefs such as Nancy Silverton, the grande dame of Italian food in Los Angeles. Next month brings David Castro, the chef of Fauna in Baja California, which was recently honored by World’s 50 Best, one of the hospitality industry’s major ratings organizations, as well as Neal Fraser, the owner of the revered eatery Redbird in Los Angeles.Across the country and south of the border this summer and fall, similar guest chef-resort collaborations are in the works:Dominique Crenn’s San Francisco restaurant, Atelier Crenn, holds three Michelin stars. She will spend part of June at the Montage resort in Los Cabos, reimagining signature dishes like her geoduck tart, above, with citrus, lemongrass and verbena mousseline.Montage Los CabosDominique Crenn at Montage Los Cabos, Cabo San Lucas, MexicoDominique Crenn, whose San Francisco restaurant, Atelier Crenn, holds three Michelin stars, will move her avant-garde French feast 1,500 miles down the Pacific Coast this month, to the Montage resort in Los Cabos. For six days, beginning June 15, Ms. Crenn will serve a menu of signature favorites from her restaurant reimagined with local Baja ingredients and flavors. It’s Ms. Crenn’s way of marking her restaurant’s 10th anniversary, and as part of the celebration, she’s organizing volunteering activities in the Los Cabos community through a local organization, and encouraging dinner attendees to join her.Culinary partners Mashama Bailey, right, and Johno Morisano will preside over the southern fare served in the cushy environs of the Thompson Austin, opening soon.Adam KuehlMashama Bailey at Thompson Austin, Austin, TexasThe Bronx-born Mashama Bailey, who won a James Beard Award for best chef of the Southeast in 2019, and her culinary partner Johno Morisano will be traveling from their home base, Savannah, Ga., to Austin this summer and fall to launch two restaurants at the soon-to-open Thompson hotel, which promises guests “mid-century modern meets late-century luxury.” While the restaurants, The Diner Bar and The Grey Market, will be permanent, Ms. Bailey herself will be steering the kitchen on selected dates, to be announced.The celebrated chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten will decamp to the One&Only Palmilla in Los Cabos to spin fresh takes on the region’s seafood and steak.One&Only PalmillaJean-Georges Vongerichten at the One&Only Palmilla, San José del Cabo, MexicoGiven the popularity of Los Cabos among Americans, who make up the bulk of the region’s international tourists, and its proximity to the United States, it’s no surprise that several top-tier chefs are flocking there. From June 28 to July 2, Jean-Georges Vongerichten — who has restaurants in Shanghai, Paris, Tokyo and several other cities, in addition to his two-Michelin-star hallmark in New York — will hunker down at the One&Only Palmilla, on the Sea of Cortez. At one of the property’s restaurants, Suviche, he’ll riff on traditional sushi and ceviche, at another, he’ll see to the searing of steaks as the waves crash and recede: surf and turf, à la Jean-Georges.The Culinary Weekend Series put on by the Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal features a diverse array of chefs, seated dinners and cocktail parties, like this one, from chef Matt Zubrod’s April takeover of the property.Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos PedregalTop-tier chefs at Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal, Cabo San Lucas, MexicoThere will be no shortage of star chefs at the Waldorf Astoria in Los Cabos this year: June brings Chicago native Stephanie Izard, a multiple James Beard Award winner and the first woman to win Bravo’s “Top Chef.” In July, James Beard Award semifinalist Ronnie Killen will bring his Texas-style barbecue to the beach. October sees two more James Beard Award winning Chicagoans, Sarah Grueneberg and Mindy Segal, and in November, “Top Chef’s” Brian Malarkey will come on down from California. The Waldorf is calling it their Culinary Weekend Series and plans to continue these stints with notable chefs into 2022.The pub-inspired fare at the Mayflower Inn & Spa, above, is the work of April Bloomfield, the chef of the Michelin-starred Breslin and the now-closed Spotted Pig in New York. She has a residency at the Connecticut resort.Mayflower Inn & Spa, Auberge Resorts CollectionApril Bloomfield at the Mayflower Inn & Spa, Washington, Conn.At the Michelin-starred Breslin and the now-closed Spotted Pig, April Bloomfield presided over some of the best pub fare in New York. When the pandemic hit, she searched for an outlet to continue her craft and help her staff. She found one in the Mayflower Inn & Spa, an Auberge resort in the bucolic Connecticut countryside. Her residency began in September and will continue for the foreseeable future.“I’m excited for the next few months,” Ms. Bloomfield said, “and looking forward to growing the chef’s garden at the Mayflower this year.” She is, quite literally, putting down roots. Current menu highlights include cauliflower tikka masala and pan-roasted lamb chops with burnt satsuma and pistachio.“It’s meant a lot,” Ms. Bloomfield said of her residency. “I’ve been able to hire some of my staff from New York and therefore keep them employed. It’s been great to have them experience the country and the produce it has to offer. We feel very grateful for the experience and to be of service.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places list for 2021. More