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Home > Plugged In > Archives > 2008 > June > 24 > Entry
Biggest tech cities? Surprise.
What’s the biggest tech town in the country?
No, not San Jose. Austin? Nope. Boston? No again.
Try New York.
According to a new study of some old numbers by AEA, the technology trade group, the New York metro area had more high-tech workers than any other place in the country. The Big Apple could claim 316,500 technology workers back in 2006 - the latest figures available from the group.
Top “Cybercities” - based on total tech employment
- New York
- Washington, D.C.
- San Jose/Silicon Valley
- Boston
- Dallas-Fort Worth
- Los Angeles
- Chicago
- Philadelphia
- Seattle
- Atlanta
Source: AeA
Washington, D.C., San Jose/Silicon Valley, Boston and Dallas-Fort Worth followed, in that order. Atlanta ranked No. 10 in high-tech workers.
If you haven’t noticed the trend yet, the bigger the city, the more the high-tech employment. Not exactly surprising.
When you dice the numbers based on high-tech workers per 1,000 residents, the data is a bit different - but still surprising too. San Jose/Silicon Valley was No. 1 on that list, followed by Boulder, Col., Huntsville Ala. (yes, that’s right), Durham, N.C. (ditto) and Washington, D.C.
Austin didn’t make the Top 10. In Texas, it trailed Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston in terms of total tech employment, but in terms of high-tech concentration, it led the state, with about 12 percent of all Austin workers in the tech industry.
In Florida, the Palm Bay-Melbourne region had the biggest concentration of tech workers, followed respectively by the Tampa Bay area, Orlando and then South Florida.
Though Atlanta was No. 10 on the overall list, it’s only No. 4 in the South (Florida excluded) when it comes to high-tech worker concentration. Huntsville led that list, followed respectively by Durham, Raleigh, Atlanta, Charlotte and Nashville.
Comments
By Frank Furter
June 24, 2008 8:52 AM | Link to this
You gotta look at the word TOTAL…it’s not per capita…big difference. With that in mind, no surprises.
By Mathew Sweezey
June 25, 2008 3:07 PM | Link to this
Number 10? Well the reason has alot to do with the community around the Tech Start up scene. With allot of those top cities they have very strong Tech Start Up communities. Remember you just companies have to start from something and right now there are some major things happening around town to help get us higher on the list by way of creating more tech companies. Check out StartUp Riot, or Gang of 5, or Atlanta BarCamp, Atlanta StartUP Weekend. These things all are fostering a very tight and growing tech community in Atlanta.
By Fred
June 26, 2008 9:32 AM | Link to this
Also need to question what is the definition of “technology worker”? Does this include people who work “in” high tech - like the person working in the chip plant for AMD, or the forklift driver in a Dell warehouse? Or is it people actually skilled in hi-tech work like development or business? Also, if you break down “technology” into finer substrata, the results would clearly be much different too. Austin has LOTs of people working in technology related fields (hardware, chips, games, etc), directly or indirectly or as support. But whether that outnumbers the legions in public service or education, etc. you’d have to ask our Chamber of Commerce.