Seattle, Riverside-San Bernardino Lead Nation in High-Tech Job Increase, Says Report

AeA, a technology trade association, on Tuesday released Cybercities 2008: An Overview of the High-Technology Industry in the Nation's Top 60 Cities. This report examines the high-tech industry in the nation's largest metropolitan areas focusing on high-tech employment, wages, establishments, payroll, employment concentration, and wage differential. The report also compares different regions of the United States and delves into the 16 sectors that comprise AeA's definition of the high-tech industry for these 60 cities.

Cybercities 2008 shows that 51 "cybercities" added high-tech jobs in 2006, according to the most recent metropolitan data available. Seattle led the nation, adding 7,800 net jobs. The next largest net gains in high-tech employment between 2005 and 2006 occurred in the New York Metro Area (+6,400) and Washington, D.C. (+6,100). On a percentage basis, Riverside-San Bernardino, California, saw the fastest job growth in 2006 at 12 percent.

"This is the first national Cybercities report AeA has published since 2000, before the high-tech bubble burst," said Christopher Hansen, president and CEO of AeA. "With the industry experiencing three consecutive years of job growth, we decided it was time again to drill down to see which cybercities are growing the fastest and across which sectors. High-tech jobs make critical contributions to local economies in terms of innovation. They also pay extremely well -- the average tech industry wage is 87 percent higher than the average private sector wage. Fifty-six cybercities had wage differentials higher than 50 percent and three cybercities -- Austin, San Diego, and Sacramento -- had differentials higher than 100 percent."

"These are the types of jobs every city wants," continued Hansen. "But how to attract and retain them is the key question all mayors, city council officials, and local business leaders grapple with. All of these cybercities compete not only with each other for such critical factors of innovation as talent and capital -- they compete with technology centers across the globe. City leaders need to ensure the quality of local K-12 education, particularly in math and science, to prepare children for these high-paying careers. They need to support vibrant research universities from which so many start-up companies are formed. They need to invest in modern infrastructure, including reliable broadband networks that are as critical to economic development today as the electrical grid was a hundred years ago. And lastly, cities must create a business-friendly environment that attracts venture capital and cutting-edge companies."

"AeA is concerned that future job growth will be jeopardized unless the United States prepares itself for a vastly more competitive global marketplace," concluded Hansen. "Many of these challenges cannot be solved at the local level. They are caused by the negligence of our national political leaders to fund legislation that invests in math and science scholarships and scientific research. They refuse to take a simple measure that would cost the taxpayer nothing and would allow the best and brightest from around the world to work in the United States instead of competing with us from abroad. This shows that far too many decision makers in Washington simply do not understand that the world has become a dramatically more competitive place and we have to adapt or we'll be left behind."

The leading metro areas by high-tech employment in 2006 were the New York Metro Area (316,500 jobs), Washington, D.C. (295,800 jobs), San Jose/Silicon Valley (225,300 jobs), Boston (191,700 jobs), and Dallas-Fort Worth (176,000 jobs). 2006 data are the most recent available at the metropolitan level.

San Jose/Silicon Valley led the nation in concentration of high-tech workers in 2006, with 286 high-tech workers per 1,000 private-sector workers. Boulder ranked second in 2006, with 230 high-tech workers per 1,000 private sector workers. Huntsville, Durham, and Washington, D.C. rounded out the top five by high-tech concentration.

San Jose/Silicon Valley dominated the manufacturing sectors. It ranked near the top in seven of the nine high-tech manufacturing categories. The New York Metro Area led