Technology continues to be a market-leading growth industry, attracting the best of the best workers given potential financial rewards. Some of the major technology hubs, however, rank among the most expensive places to live. Those cities costs often overwhelm even the higher tech incomes. While San Francisco and San Jose were the original tech meccas in the U.S., the cost of living can be prohibitive. Median single family home prices in San Francisco hit $1.65 million in July 2018, Santa Clara County (San Jose) $1.351 million and $1.61 million in San Mateo County according to the California Association of Realtors®.
Where then, are the places for people to work and live with affordability plus tech related jobs? To answer this, SmartAsset (for the fifth year in a row) analyzed and ranked the 25 best tech cities for 2018. They examined 190 cities, with factors in their rankings including:
- Percent of All Workers in Computer and Mathematical Occupations – from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 2017 data
- Average Tech Salary – BLS 2017 data
- Ratio of Average Tech Salary to the Average Salary Across All Fields – BLS May 2017 Occupation Employment Statistics
- Unemployment Rate – based on holders with bachelor’s degrees, sourced from the Census Bureau’s 2016 5-Year American Community Survey
- Cost of Living – Council for Community and Economic Research , data from 2017
Each of these factors were ranked across the 190 cities with an equal weighting for each metric. The city with the lowest average ranking received a zero score and a 100 for the city with the best ranking. The following table shows the top-10 based on SmartAsset’s metrics and methodology.
To read the entire study from SmartAsset click https://smartasset.com/mortgage/the-best-american-cities-to-work-in-tech-in-2018
Tune in tomorrow for those cities in which technology has the greatest impact on their economies and commercial real estate markets based on the just-released Cushman & Wakefield Tech Cities 2.0 report.
A final note. The importance of education in a core STEM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) is obvious in the tech incomes reported in the top-10 list above compared to typical income for all people. Tech workers made from 66 percent to 91 percent more than the average person in the market.
Everyone out there – you simply cannot have too much math, physics, computer and related courses in high school.
Ted