Can You Guess Which City Is The Year's Top Tech Talent Market?

To the surprise of perhaps no one, the San Francisco Bay Area was named the leading labor market for the U.S.-Canadian technology workforce in the Scoring Tech Talent 2022 report published by CBRE Group Inc CBRE.

What Happened: CBRE used 13 metrics to measure each market’s depth and scope, with labor costs weighted more heavily than office rents because tech companies traditionally allocated more funding to their payroll than their landlord.

According to the new report, this year’s top five markets for tech talent were the same as last year: The San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and the metro New York City area. The report noted that Toronto had the most tech talent growth between 2016 and 2021 (+88,900 jobs), followed by Seattle (45,560) and Vancouver (44,460 – which ranked eighth among the top 50 markets).

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What Else Happened: The report also noted that the two key elements of a major tech talent market were high educational attainment and higher concentrations of young people.

“Forty-five of the top 50 tech talent markets have a metro-level educational attainment rate above their national averages of 32.9% in the U.S. and 31.5% in Canada,” the report said. “The top 10 markets have 43% or more of residents over 25 years old with at least a bachelor’s degree. Washington, D.C., and the San Francisco Bay Area have rates of 51% or more.”

And also not surprisingly, finding worthwhile tech talent is becoming harder.

“Most tech talent employers report that tight labor market conditions constrained their hiring plans and made remote work a more important offering to fill open roles,” the report noted.

Photo: Wabisabi2015 / Flickr Creative Commons

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