Data centers have dominated industrial headlines — and for good reason. But, demand for warehousing and logistics space remains strong in its own right: U.S. e-commerce sales reached $340.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 12.2% year-over-year and 20.2% of core retail for the highest share since 2020. And, in August, container imports hit 2.6 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs), the third-highest monthly total on record.
Much of that demand is landing in markets that were barely on the logistics map a decade ago. That’s because the e-commerce boom turned former agricultural, energy and desert metros into logistics markets in their own rights. In many of them, logistics has grown into an outsized part of the local economy by adding jobs faster than the population grew and bringing a wave of new companies and industrial space with it.
To identify where warehousing and logistics have expanded most significantly in the last decade, we ranked 131 U.S. metros with populations above 400,000 on nine indicators covering logistics employment, pay, business formation and industrial real estate, with growth weighted most heavily. See the methodology for the full breakdown. See the methodology for the full breakdown.
Here are some of the takeaways:
Overall
- Bakersfield, Calif., is the #1 industrial boomtown metro
- Six of the top 10 metros are in California’s Central Valley
- Logistics jobs grew faster than the population in 127 of the 131 metros studied
Metro level
- Visalia, Calif., and Brownsville, Texas, have nearly twice as many logistics workers per 1,000 residents as they did a decade ago
- Fresno, Calif., more than doubled its logistics businesses in five years, the fastest rate in the country
- Dallas-Fort Worth added the most logistics workers with more than 121,000
- California’s Inland Empire has the highest share of jobs in logistics in the top 20, at 8.3%
- Las Vegas doubled its logistics workforce and built more new space than any other Western metro in the top 20
- Los Angeles added logistics businesses fast while building almost nothing new
Keep reading for the top 20 metros, or jump to:
- Where logistics jobs outgrew population the most
- Where job growth came with the most new construction
- Where logistics businesses multiplied fastest
Bakersfield Is #1 Industrial Boomtown, California’s Central Valley Claims 6 of 10 Top Entries
Bakersfield was the only metro in the study to rank in the national top 10 on all three of the measures that carried the most weight.
The first is growth in logistics jobs per resident. Logistics employment in the metro grew far faster than its population during the decade, so the number of logistics workers for every 1,000 residents rose 88% — the third-largest increase in the country. That came with 13,776 workers added. Next is business formation: Logistics establishments grew 91.3% between 2018 and 2023 (also third). Finally, Bakersfield’s third measure was concentration. By 2024, logistics accounted for 7.4% of all local jobs for the sixth-highest share of the 131 metros.
Notably, the growth has come through people and establishments more than through buildings. Industrial space per resident ranks just 85th, and new space delivered from 2021 to 2025 equals only 13.4% of inventory for 50th nationally. Granted, much of the development that did happen — including The Wonderful Company’s campus on more than 1,600 acres of former farmland in Shafter, Calif. — came before the study window. Logistics pay is also 15.7% above the local average, or third-highest among the top 20. Clearly, as Kern County’s agriculture and oil industries changed, workers moved into warehouse roles — a transition anticipated by local economists.
2 – Riverside-San Bernardino (Inland Empire), Calif.
What began decades ago as Los Angeles overflow is now home to the highest concentration of logistics jobs in the top 20 at 8.3% of all employment. Specifically, LA has just more than 144,000 square feet of industrial space per 1,000 residents (third among the top 20), which works as further evidence of the density of industrial rooftops throughout Riverside and San Bernardino counties. On top of that, the metro added 69,408 logistics workers during the decade for seventh-highest in the country in raw terms. That expanding workforce equated to a logistics jobs per resident rise of 51.6%, which is roughly the median among the top 20.
Furthermore, new operators kept arriving even as available space ran short: Logistics firms grew 75.2% in five years — fifth-fastest in the study — to bring the total to 6,216 businesses (also fifth among the top 20). Then, as western portions of the market filled up through the mid-2010s, development pushed east and north into Perris, Beaumont, Moreno Valley and the Victor Valley in California. When those areas tightened, too, activity moved beyond the metro limits and north into the Central Valley and further.
As the Central Valley’s primary regional capital, Fresno offers a broader statewide distribution reach than smaller adjacent markets, like Visalia, Calif. Positioned roughly halfway between Bakersfield and Stockton along Highway 99, it sits as a central hub between northern and southern California that puts both Los Angeles and Bay Area distribution points within a three- to four-hour haul.
While headline mega-deliveries for Amazon and Ulta Beauty arrived around 2018, construction between 2021 and 2025 slowed, placing Fresno lower among metros for new completions as a percentage of total space. This second phase has left small-bay industrial space in short supply, while smaller logistics firms take root in the market. Even so, from 2018 to 2023, Fresno expanded its roster of logistics firms by 124.6% — the highest growth rate of any market in the study. In parallel, its logistics workforce nearly doubled (up 99.3% from 2014 to 2024) — fourth-fastest among the top 20.
Interestingly, not all Inland Empire spillover stayed in California. A substantial share crossed into Nevada, drawn by lower costs (opens in new tab)and the absence of state income tax. And, with it, public investment arrived, as well: The Nevada Department of Transportation widened I-15 through North Las Vegas from Craig Road to Speedway Boulevard between 2016 and 2018 with an additional widening north to the Apex Industrial Park still to come. Las Vegas also offered a growing labor pool and an expanding base of new consumers in one of the country’s fastest-growing metros.
By 2024, logistics accounted for 7.4% of all jobs in Las Vegas, one of the highest shares in the country. Accordingly, logistics employment rose 105% during the decade, for the fourth-fastest rate in the study. Measured against population, logistics jobs per resident rose 76.8% between 2014 and 2024 (the fifth-highest increase nationally) with 44,661 workers added. Along with Visalia, Calif., Las Vegas was one of the metros that matched this job growth with new construction. In fact, industrial space delivered between 2021 and 2025 equals 28.8% of the metro’s 2025 inventory, the third-highest share among the top 20 metros and the highest of any Western metro in the top 20.
Dallas-Fort Worth is the first metro outside of the West to rank near the very top, joining California’s Inland Empire as one of the two largest established logistics hubs in the ranking. Its strongest scores came on the metrics that reward absolute scale: From 2014 to 2024, the metro added 121,063 logistics workers, the largest raw increase of any U.S. metro and the only one to clear 100,000. With that, it ranks fifth nationally in logistics establishments (6,217), behind New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami, but ahead of Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif.
Construction has also kept pace with the hiring. Space delivered from 2021 to 2025 equals 19.3% of current inventory for the fourth-highest share among the top 20. What’s more, among the six metros that added more than 80,000 logistics workers in the last decade, Dallas-Fort Worth is the only one that also ranks in the top five of the top 20 for new space. Intermodal capacity helps sustain that pace: The AllianceTexas complex, home to the world’s first industrial airport when it opened in 1989, handled more than 1.1 million rail lifts in 2024.
Returning to the Central Valley, this time we move to the northern San Joaquin Valley. The Stockton metro (Stockton, Tracy, Lathrop and Manteca) has long served as the primary big-box distribution hub for Bay Area demand. Here, direct freeway access to the more expensive, land-constrained Bay Area via I-580 over the Altamont Pass and I-205, combined with the inland Port of Stockton, connects it to that demand.
Stockton’s industrial journey began in earnest in the 1990s and accelerated sharply after Amazon arrived in 2013. And, that head start over its Central Valley peers has placed it in a different league for industrial density. It ranks second among the top metros for industrial space per 1,000 residents, just behind Indianapolis and ahead of California’s Inland Empire in third. The existing cluster also likely made it easier and faster for new companies to enter, because labor pools, trucking networks and supporting services were already in place. Then, when the e-commerce boom hit, the number of firms more than doubled, rising 118.6% between 2018 and 2023 for the second-highest increase (behind only Fresno, Calif.). This was the metro’s strongest category, scoring 19.2 out of 20 points
Visalia is the smallest Central Valley metro in the top 20 by population, yet it leads the entire study on logistics workers relative to population. In plain terms, logistics jobs grew much faster than the population, nearly doubling the number of logistics workers for every 1,000 residents (up 97.2%) between 2014 and 2024. Logistics employment itself jumped 108.1%, the third-highest growth rate, though that translated to 5,841 new jobs.
To that end, UPS opened its 425,000-square-foot Central Valley Ground Hub in October 2020. Then, Amazon followed with a 1.2-million-square-foot fulfillment center in 2021. In total, space delivered from 2021 to 2025 equals 18.8% of inventory (fifth in the top 20), and development has continued, with Amazon opening another Visalia hub in August 2026. Like Fresno, Calif., Visalia sits in the heart of one of the country’s most productive agricultural regions, so e-commerce isn’t the only source of demand. As such, part of the warehouse growth supports cold storage, food packaging, and ag-related distribution for dairy, citrus, grapes and other commodities. What’s more, in September 2026, AGCO opened a 115,000-square-foot parts distribution center beside Highway 99, replacing its previous Visalia site and more than doubling its West Coast parts capacity.
Sacramento sits at the other end of the scale among the Central Valley entries with more than 2.4 million residents. In this case, strong net in-migration, especially from the Bay Area around 2020, likely boosted last-mile demand locally. Sacramento also plays a wider distribution role: The junction of Interstates 5 and 80, as well as State Route 99, gives freight access to the Bay Area and the rest of California, as well as the Pacific Northwest and markets east of the Sierra Nevada. It’s also worth noting that Union Pacific’s Roseville yard is the largest rail yard west of the Rockies.
In our results, Sacramento posted the fifth-highest increase in logistics jobs per resident among the top 20 metros with logistics workers per resident 69.6% higher in 2024 than in 2014. In the same period, the logistics workforce grew 86.1%, adding 28,162 workers, while the number of logistics establishments rose 72.8% between 2018 and 2023 for the sixth-highest increase in the study.
Logistics pay relative to other local jobs is the lowest of any top-20 metro, at 22.5% below the local median, and 126th among the 131 metros studied. Sacramento is the state capital, with a large base of government, professional and administrative employment that sets a high local benchmark.
The lone Midwestern entry in the top 10, Indianapolis has long been known as the “Crossroads of America,” standing at the junction of interstates 65, 70, 69 and 74, one of the densest interstate networks in the country. That geography has made it a classic Midwest distribution and cross-dock hub.
Among the top 20, Indianapolis ranks first for industrial space per 1,000 residents at just more than 170,000 square feet and sixth for logistics job share at 7.2%. Moreover, the growth is steady, rather than fast: Logistics employment rose 69.4% during the decade, and space delivered from 2021 to 2025 equals 18.7% of inventory, sixth in the top 20.
In this area,FedEx’s second-largest air hub in the world, opened in 1988 and expanded several times (including a $1.5 billion commitment in 2018), has long anchored the market and continues to draw related activity.
Modesto lands as the last of the top 10 and the sixth Central Valley market overall. Just south of Stockton, it carries a smaller industrial footprint than the bigger valley hubs, yet its metro still counts roughly 560,000 residents, larger than Visalia.
Modesto lands as the last of the top 10 and the sixth Central Valley market overall. Just south of Stockton, Calif., it carries a smaller industrial footprint than the bigger valley hubs, yet its metro still counts roughly 560,000 residents (larger than Visalia, Calif.).
Between 2018 and 2023, the number of logistics establishments in Modesto jumped 84.2%, the fourth-fastest rate in the study. That put Modesto ahead of in-state neighbors Riverside-San Bernardino and only a step behind Fresno, Stockton and Bakersfield. Similar to Fresno, the growth in Modesto is in firms rather than buildings: Space delivered from 2021 to 2025 equals 6% of inventory, or 18th in the top 20.
Visalia, Calif., & Brownsville, Texas, Have Nearly Twice as Many Logistics Workers per 1,000 Residents as a Decade Ago
Logistics employment grew faster than population in 127 of the 131 metros studied in the last decade.
However, what stands out is not simply that logistics jobs outgrew population in most places, but rather where that gap was extreme enough to nearly double the density of logistics workers.
In those places, the industry may have stopped merely serving local demand and started handling freight for a much wider region. In doing so, it then raised the metro’s overall logistics ceiling on capacity and turned it into a more important place on the national map.
We measured this as the percentage change in logistics jobs per resident between 2014 and 2024. In half of the metros, logistics jobs per resident increased by at least 34%.
Notably, Visalia, Calif., and Brownsville, Texas, nearly tripled that pace with the ratio of logistics workers to residents growing 97.2% and 95.1%, respectively, throughout the decade.
In absolute terms, Visalia added 5,841 logistics workers and Brownsville increased by 5,562 — the two smallest gains among the top 20. Yet, relative to their populations, those increases were far larger than the much bigger job gains recorded in Dallas-Fort Worth or Chicago.
For Visalia, the rise came alongside a UPS ground hub and an Amazon fulfillment center, whereas, in Brownsville, it coincided with a border port handling major steel trade with Mexico. Back in California in Bakersfield, where logistics jobs per resident rose 88%, the expansion came alongside the growth of a distribution corridor at the junction of I-5 and Highway 99.
At the other end of the scale, Dallas-Fort Worth added 121,063 logistics workers and Chicago rose by 90,555 — more than any other metros in the study. But, their logistics jobs per resident increased only 42% and 39%, respectively.
In any case, the metros that rose fastest on this measure and led the country in new logistics firms or new industrial space are the ones that emerged as distribution markets throughout the decade. California’s Fresno, Bakersfield, and Modesto took three of the top four spots in the nation for growth in logistics firms, while Las Vegas was eighth for new industrial space and Visalia was 17th. All five sit in the overall top 10.
Conversely, where strong growth in jobs per resident arrived without new firms or new space, the metros fell short of the top 20. Namely, Springfield, Mass.; Asheville, N.C.; and Bridgeport, Conn., all finished outside of the top 50. In Springfield, for example, logistics employment grew just 37.6% (below the study median), and new space equaled only 0.5% of inventory.
Meanwhile, for the Central Valley entries in California, proximity to the coast helped give the entire valley its opening. Of course, Visalia, Bakersfield, Fresno and Modesto seized it during the decade, but Stockton was the outlier: Its ratio rose only 24.6%, which fits a hub that was already established and claimed a higher share of local jobs in logistics and more industrial space per resident than any of its valley peers.
Las Vegas &Visalia, Calif., Pair a Decade of Job Growth With the Most Recent Construction
The chart below sets each top-20 metro’s growth in logistics jobs per resident from 2014 to 2024 against the industrial space it added from 2021 to 2025, measured as a share of its 2025 inventory. Note that it does not show whether the two trends happened simultaneously. Instead, it highlights which markets were still building at the end of a decade of job gains and which had built earlier or barely at all.
Above, Las Vegas and Visalia, Calif., emerge as the clearest examples of markets that combined strong growth in logistics jobs per resident throughout the decade with substantial new construction in the latest period.
Las Vegas ranked third among the top 20 for new space (equal to 28.8% of inventory) and fourth for growth in logistics jobs per resident. Here, six large facilities, many in North Las Vegas, account for about one-tenth of that space with the rest spread across smaller buildings.
Visalia, Calif., leaned more toward workforce expansion, but still ranked fifth for new space, equal to 18.8% of inventory. Unlike several other Central Valley markets that saw broader firm formation, Visalia’s logistics growth has been concentrated among a handful of the industry’s largest employers.
For comparison, Charleston, S.C., and Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., delivered the most new space in the top 20, equal to 33% and 30% of inventory, respectively, without matching gains in logistics jobs per resident in the decade.
Charleston’s construction in the window was led by Walmart’s 3-million-square-foot import distribution center in Ridgeville, S.C., which opened in 2022 near the Port of Charleston’s inland campus, as well as by speculative warehouses at Camp Hall, the Berkeley County park anchored by Volvo Cars’ plant, where Redwood Materials is building a battery materials campus. Additionally, the Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal opened in 2021, although container volumes at the Port of Charleston have since fallen back from their peak in fiscal year 2022.
Further south in Florida, Cape Coral-Fort Myers’ new space coincided with rapid population growth in Lee County. Even after the surge in development, it remains among the lowest metros in the study for industrial space per resident.
Otherwise, Bakersfield, Calif., and Brownsville, Texas, fall into the quadrant indicating strong job growth with more moderate recent development. Notably, in Bakersfield, much of the park development began before the 2021-2025 measurement window. In contrast, Brownsville’s gains were more employment-driven (trucking, brokerage and customs activity) than space-driven, which is consistent with its role as a border trade gateway with relatively limited large-scale warehouse development on the ground.
Fresno & Stockton Lead a California Sweep in Logistics Business Growth
When it came to the growth in logistics companies, California stood apart: The eight fastest-growing metros in the study are all in California, and seven of them sit in the top 20.
Fresno, Calif., in the middle of the valley, led the country with a 124.6% rise in logistics establishments between 2018 and 2023. Then, Stockton, Calif., to the north, was second at 118.6%, and Bakersfield, Calif., at the southern end, was third at 91.3%.
Stockton’s firm growth ran well ahead of its job gains: Establishments more than doubled, yet logistics employment rose only 42.1% throughout the decade. What’s more, a large jump in the number of firms accompanied by modest job growth is consistent with many small operators, such as independent trucking companies, and in line with the national surge that FTR Transportation Intelligence recorded — 109,340 new trucking companies in 2021, up 84% from 2020. On the contrary, Fresno and Bakersfield grew strongly on both measures.
California may have been particularly targeted because so much import freight moves through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and the Central Valley already had a deep trucking base serving agricultural and refrigerated freight.
Finally, Los Angeles was a standout for a different reason: Space delivered here from 2021 to 2025 equals just 3.4% of inventory (one of the lowest shares in the top 20), yet the metro still added logistics firms at the eighth-fastest rate in the study, up 47.9%. With that, it ended 2023 with 14,641 logistics establishments, the third-highest in the country behind New York and Chicago. Growth in firms without growth in buildings points to operators that likely need little space, such as brokers, carriers and last-mile providers that are close to the ports.
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