Last week we released new research defining the U.S. “advanced industries” sector and showing how heavily the future prosperity of U.S. regions and the nation depends on this list of 50 R&D- and STEM-worker intensive industries. These industries—which range from automotive and aerospace manufacturing to energy activities to digital services like computer system design and software—play an outsized role in powering regional and national economic success. Their vitality and expansion are a prerequisite for any future inclusive growth.
And yet, only a limited number of U.S. metro areas retain truly dense and diverse advanced industry bases, however. The table shows the 20 large metro areas where advanced industries employ the biggest share of the workforce.
2014 Milken Institute Best-Performing Cities
The 2014 Milken Institute Best-Performing Cities Index ranks U.S. metropolitan areas by how well they are creating and sustaining jobs and economic growth. The components include job, wage and salary, and technology growth. In most years, these give a good indication of the underlying structural performance of regional economics.
The Surprising Cities Creating The Most Tech Jobs - Forbes
We turned to Mark Schill, research director at Praxis Strategy Group, to analyze job creation trends in the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan areas from 2001 to 2013, a period that extends from the bust of the last tech expansion to the flowering of the current one. He looked at employment in the industries we normally associate with technology, such as software, engineering and computer programming services. He also analyzed the numbers of workers in other industries who are classified as being in STEM occupations (science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related jobs). This captures the many tech workers who are employed in businesses that at first glance may not seem to have anything to do with technology at all. For instance just 8% of the nation’s 620,000 software application developers work at software firms — the vast majority are employed in industries as disparate as manufacturing, finance, and business services.
The four metro areas that have generated tech jobs at the fastest pace over the past 12 years are far outside the Bay Area, in the southern half of the country, in places with lower costs of living and generally friendly business climates.
- Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, Texas, In first place: where tech companies have expanded employment by 41% since 2001 and the number of STEM workers has risen by 17% over the same period. Looking at the near-term, 2010-13, the Austin metro area also ranks first in the nation.
- Raleigh-Cary, N.C., which ranks second on our list. Like Austin, Raleigh-Cary is a big college metro area, and also hosts the state capital, something that tends to lessen wild swings during industry downturns. Like Austin, Raleigh is not a primary center of the social media boom, but it has registered a 54.7% increase in tech sector employment since 2001 and an impressive 24.6% rise in STEM jobs.
- Houston-Sugarland-Baytown, Texas, and
- Nashville-Franklin-Murfreesboro, Tenn.
Tech geeks, take note: Silicon Valley is still the center of the technology universe, but if you're thinking about a career in computing and want to avoid the Bay Area's sky-high cost of living, consider another locale—say, Durham, N.C., or even Huntsville, Ala.
Flip through this slide show for a glimpse of the 30 cities boasting the most high-tech jobs per capita. The American Electronics Assn., a trade group, compiled statistics on 60 cities using Labor Dept. data from 2006, the most recent period for which it's available. The slides rank cities by tech job density and include data on total jobs, growth in that total from 2005, average annual IT salary, ranking by salary, and biggest sector in each city.
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