If you ever wanted more proof that the country’s tech center is diversifying away from the West Coast, a new study suggests that four in 10 tech-company job postings are outside of California, Oregon, and Washington.
That analysis by the Conference Board (and reported by Bloomberg) also hints at a trend. Back in 2019, some 30 percent of tech-company listings were outside the West Coast; now it’s 43 percent. Tech companies are hiring aggressively in Texas, Virginia, and New York, as well as up-and-coming tech hubs in Illinois and other Midwestern states.
Texas has certainly benefitted from West Coast migration. According to data from CompTIA, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio all saw a significant increase in job postings between November and December, with Dallas topping the overall list. Over the past two years, a number of tech giants have erected either a new headquarters or a major facility in the state, including Oracle, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, and Tesla. The Texas government has fought hard to attract businesses with numerous incentives, including highly favorable tax rates.
As revealed by Dice’s latest Tech Salary Report, though, Silicon Valley and Seattle remain the nation’s tech hubs paying the highest average salaries to technologists, at $133,204 and $118,729 per year, respectively. San Diego ($114,959) and Los Angeles ($113,658) also made the top-ten list. Moreover, California and Washington saw year-over-year increases in salary (6.3 percent and 12.2 percent), hinting at a high level of demand for technologists.
In other words, the West Coast market for tech talent remains extremely robust. But other tech hubs across the country are also building out their tech-company ecosystems, spurring a rising demand for tech talent. With the tech unemployment rate at 1.7 percent in January (again, according to CompTIA), this strong demand could continue for quite some time to come.
