CBRE Names Austin #8 Top Tech Talent

CBRE Inc. ranked Austin, Texas number eight on its Tech Talent Scorecard for 2017 that ranked large metro areas in the United States and in Canada. This is a drop from Austin’s 2016 number five ranking, but it still highlights the city’s tech focus and business friendly reputation, according to the report.

Austin received a total score of 58.73. Total tech talent in Austin has seen 28.3 percent growth from 2011, with employment in 2016 at 68,810. The average wage is $91,443, an increase of 7.6 percent from 2011 to 2016.

With its employment breakdown, based on April 2017’s U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the highest paid tech talent was for Computer & Information Systems Managers, who had an average wage of $154,140. This was followed by Software Developers & Programmers, who earned an average wage of $97,994.

Other factors considered included the labor pool, which saw 2,249 tech degrees from 2014 to 2015, an increase of 34 percent based on growth from 2011 to 2015. Computer Engineering saw the largest growth at 57 percent for 1,364 degrees. Forty eight percent of individuals in the Austin metro area have a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to 2016 U.S. Census Bureau data. The breakdown of tech diversity was indicated at 77 percent men and 23 percent women.

Taking top honors in the report was the San Francisco Bay area, followed by Seattle, New York City, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Toronto, and Raleigh-Durham. Boston and Dallas-Fort Worth rounded out the top ten.