Seattle ranks No. 2 overall in CBRE’s 2022 Scoring Tech Talent report, according to a news release today on the report.
The report ranks and analyzes the top North American markets for tech talent and the changes in growth patterns driven by remote work and a tight labor market.
In the report, now in its 10th year, Seattle encompasses the Seattle, Bellevue, and Tacoma areas.
A link to the full report is here.
The U.S. added a net 136,000 tech talent jobs last year across established hubs such as the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, and Seattle, as well as smaller markets like Nashville, Cleveland, and California’s Inland Empire, CBRE said in its news release. It noted that tech job growth and tech office leasing rebounded in 2021 from slowdowns in 2020.
Seattle led all U.S. markets in tech job creation, adding 45,560 tech talent jobs between 2016 and 2021, behind only Toronto in North America, the release said, adding that Seattle ranks fourth in North America for its concentration of tech talent jobs.
Tech talent jobs represents 9.9 percent of overall employment across the Puget Sound region — nearly double the 50-market average of 5.6 percent. Only the San Francisco Bay Area is more concentrated among large U.S. markets, CBRE said.
“Top talent can choose where they live and work,” Bill Cooper, senior vice president with CBRE’s Tech & Media Practice in Bellevue, said in the release. “They have been moving to this region for years due to a perfect mix of jobs, housing, outdoors, community, and diversity. Growth follows talent, and I think we are just getting started. It's not just traditional tech driving the job growth. We are seeing a lot of activity from biotech and gaming — sectors equally reliant on tech talent for success.”
CBRE’s report ranks the top 50 North American markets by analyzing 13 measures of their ability to attract and develop tech talent, including tech graduation rates, tech-job concentration, tech labor pool size, and labor and real estate costs.
CBRE also ranks the Next 25 emerging tech markets on a narrower set of criteria. Tech talent is defined as 20 key tech professions, including software engineers and systems and data managers, across all industries.
Among areas Seattle stood out in the report:
- The region’s tech talent workforce grew the second fastest on a percentage basis in the U.S. (32 percent between 2016-2021), behind only California’s Inland Empire.
- It is home to the sixth-largest tech talent workforce in North America, with 189,570 workers. That number is about half of the No. 1 market, the San Francisco Bay Area, at 378,870.
- It had the second-highest growth rate in millennial population from 2015 to 2020 at 17.3 percent, behind only Austin at 17.8 percent. Seattle is the second most concentrated in millennials with those aged 25 to 39 representing 24.7 percent of the overall population, again following Austin at 25.6 percent.
- It added 24,587 more tech talent jobs than tech graduates between 2016 and 2021.
- It was the fourth most-diverse market for female tech degree graduates with females representing 31.6 percent of all those graduating with a tech degree.
- The region’s average tech worker salary is second highest ($122,341), behind the San Francisco Bay Area ($140,000).
While North American tech-talent employment rebounded from the pandemic to post job gains across most top markets in 2021, the industry’s resilience will be tested again amid economic turmoil in 2022, CBRE’s release said.
