The Experience Dividend: When Cities Become the New Battleground for Talent

One Thursday evening, the warm yellow lights began to glow at Pavilion Square in Kuala Lumpur. People chatted at open-air cafés, tropical plants swayed in the breeze, and the silhouette of the Petronas Twin Towers gradually became clearer in the distance. Meanwhile, on the waterfront promenade in Dubai, runners passed newly opened art installations, alongside families with children. In a neighborhood in Bangalore, entrepreneurs walked out of co-working spaces and turned into a craft beer bar in an alley where live jazz was playing. These scenes seem ordinary, but they are becoming one of the most important factors in global talent mobility.

For a long time, companies attracted talent with compensation, benefits, corporate culture, and management mechanisms. These still matter, but the talent equation is changing. The most watched cities—London, Paris, Tokyo—have the most museums, restaurants, parks, and universities, but people's actual experience of living in these cities does not necessarily correspond to the density of amenities. Congestion, high costs, distance, and pressure greatly diminish the appeal of these megacities.

A report jointly released by the World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) introduced a concept: the "experience dividend." It refers to the quality of daily experience that a city provides for its residents and workers, which is becoming a key lever for attracting and retaining talent. Researchers surveyed nearly 17,000 professionals across more than 80 cities on five continents and, for the first time, distinguished "facility density" from "experiential perception." They found that the cities with the densest facilities do not necessarily produce the happiest employees. What truly predicts job satisfaction is whether residents believe the city is getting better, especially in terms of entertainment, leisure, and daily life experience.

The data is surprising. In cities with high experience satisfaction, 78% of respondents said they liked their jobs; in cities with low experience satisfaction, that figure was only 48%. The gap is 30 percentage points, and this dimension has been almost entirely ignored by companies' radar. When the researchers compared 11 elements of urban life side by side, the experiential dimension ranked first alongside economic opportunity, even surpassing housing, healthcare, transportation, and safety. In other words, where you live and how you experience the city every day is almost as important as what you do for a living.

The experience dividend is especially significant for retention. In high-experience cities, the proportion of employees planning to stay is 12 percentage points higher. The age difference is even more striking: among people under 25, the retention gap between high- and low-experience cities is as high as 20 percentage points; for employees in their 50s, it is only 6 percentage points. This means that a city's everyday texture appeals far more to young talent than to older workers. Even in the IT industry, where remote work is most flexible, the satisfaction gap caused by the experience difference remains as high as 20 percentage points. Salary cannot close this gap—the data shows that moving to a city with a better experience improves job satisfaction by roughly the same amount as being promoted one income level.These findings are reshaping how companies and cities choose locations. Cities are no longer just collections of office buildings, but proposers of lifestyles. The overlooked cities—Dubai, Bengaluru, Kuala Lumpur, Riyadh, Baku—are becoming new destinations for talent, thanks to more open public spaces, richer nightlife, more pleasant walking experiences, and a stronger sense of community. They may not have Paris's century-old cafés, but they offer a more relaxed street atmosphere, less commuting pressure, and a more vibrant creative ecosystem.

For companies, choosing an office location is no longer just a matter of cost accounting. A city where employees are willing to take a walk in the park after work, grab a coffee at a corner shop, or attend a community music festival on the weekend will deliver higher loyalty and creativity. Yet many companies still chase the traditional "star cities" out of inertia, ignoring the real signal: is this city actually getting better?

For city administrators, investment in experience is no longer a "soft add-on." Parks, public spaces, cultural venues, nightlife, and walkability—factors that seem unrelated to the economy—are in fact hard currency in the competition for talent. Cities attract companies, companies attract talent, and talent determines a city's future. Those cities that are the first to grasp the experience dividend will have a deeper, more stable talent pool and ultimately win long-term growth.

Perhaps the mark of a successful city is no longer the density of skyscrapers, but whether people are willing to stay a little longer after the day is done. That moment of pleasure is the value of the experience dividend.