Despite all the headlines about layoffs at tech’s biggest companies, organizations everywhere continue to hire tech professionals. Which metro areas are seeing the most tech hiring activity?
For an answer, we can turn to CompTIA’s monthly job report, which breaks down the metro areas with the most tech job postings (CompTIA relies on Lightcast, which captures and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country). As you can see from the following chart, December was a very good month for Washington, DC and New York City:
For decades, the federal government defined Washington, DC’s tech scene. Various federal agencies need thousands of tech professionals for virtually every purpose, from keeping websites running to ensuring tech stacks are safe from internal and external attack. Federal contractors (especially in burgeoning industries like defense) vacuum up tech talent every year.
In recent years, the city’s tech professionals have also benefitted from the rise of significant tech scenes in nearby Virginia and Maryland. For example, Amazon has been constructing a massive “HQ2” facility in Northern Virginia that, once completed, will reportedly employ more than 25,000 workers by 2030. Maryland has also enjoyed significant tech hiring momentum, according to data from CompTIA. Combined with DC’s attempts to foster a local startup scene, and you have lots of opportunities for tech professionals with the right mix of skills and experience.
That burgeoning tech scene has translated into higher compensation. A 2020 study by management-software firm Carta found that tech professionals around Washington, DC make 97 percent of what their colleagues in San Francisco earn. “Northern Virginia has become a magnet for the industry, with the Dulles Technology Corridor continuing its growth along the Silver Line and Amazon HQ2 going up in Arlington,” added Axios, which summarized the report.
New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas topped out CompTIA’s list. If you add up the total job postings for San Francisco and San Jose, it’s also clear that Silicon Valley is doing pretty well despite the recent layoffs at Meta, Twitter, Salesforce, and other prominent local companies. Overall tech unemployment hit 1.8 percent in December, suggesting a widespread level of demand for all kinds of tech professionals.
