The Bay Area is still a prime destination for top tech talent — but one of its biggest draws remains the region’s marquee-name “unicorn” companies, new jobs data suggests.

Data on job searches from employment search site Indeed.com show that Bay Area tech unicorns are a huge draw for workers looking to make a move up the ladder locally. Crunching searches in the U.S. from 2014 through October 2016, Indeed calculated each U.S. tech unicorn’s share of total job searches in the country on a monthly basis.

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You might be surprised by some of the most coveted unicorn companies to work for in the… more

Matt Petty

The fact that some of these companies (known as unicorns because they are still privately held despite having a valuation of at least $1 billion) wasn’t surprising to the author of the report.

“The tech unicorns have captured the popular imagination as being superstar companies and they are sort of the poster children of the tech industry,” Indeed Economist Daniel Culbertson told the Business Times.

The Indeed data also showed that job searches corresponded closely with how well a company appears to be doing. Thus, searches for companies that appear to be less popular or faltering saw less interest, while “hot” companies saw an uptick.

“Pinterest and Vice Media have not had as a high profile recently and job seeker activity is often closely connected to how well-known a company is at a given time and how much hype they are generating,” Culbertson said. That type of buzz has made sought-after companies like Uber and Airbnb perennial favorites with local job seekers, and has even sparked interest in unicorns in Southern California.

“Uber is far and above more popular with job seekers than the other companies because the company employs so many as drivers. Job seekers searching for Uber are looking for both corporate and driving jobs,” Culbertson said. “Then between Elon Musk’s public profile and the idea of commercial space travel, SpaceX has built a lot of notoriety. And if we look at how much Snapchat has grown over the past year, we know that it has been in the news much more.”

Check out our graphic above for info on just how popular each local unicorn is with job seekers.