Forbes has released their report on the best cities to pursue a tech career. Topping the list is the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash., metro area, which brought about 12 percent in job growth over a span of two years.
According to the Praxis Strategy Group, which created the ranking system for Forbes, the Puget Sound area in the state of Washington has grown over the last few years as a tech mecca, seeing a 43% increase in tech employment for the last ten years and bringing about an 18% expansion in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs. Companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing have called the Seattle metro area home for many decades possibly due to the locale's low housing costs.
The Washington, DC metro area came in second place as a hot spot for finding tech jobs. Forbes revealed that there was a 20.6% increase in tech vacancies since 2001 and a 20.8% rise in STEM jobs. There tech areas primarily represented in the D.C. metro area include computer systems design, programming, as well as research and development opportunities with private companies. Completing the top five cities are San Diego, Salt Lake City, and Baltimore.
The tech industry certainly has evolved over a 30 year span. The Forbes report points out that the recent claims regarding a surge of tech-related job openings starting a "US job revival" could lead to a bust. The report uses Silicon Valley as an example of how the area brought together a "confluence of engineering prowess, marketing savvy and, perhaps most critically, access to startup capital". However, by the end of 2011, Silicon Valley estimated that around 170,000 less people were employed when compared to 2000.
The main job cuts affected the manufacturing as well as the business and financial services, sectors, including a large number of STEM professionals. The current boom, the report admits, has resulted in an 8 percent increase in the number of tech jobs available in the San Jose metro in the last couple of years. However, the area still has experienced a 12.6 percent reduction in STEM jobs.
Regardless, the report acknowledges that the "growth and concentration of tech and STEM jobs" is still sufficient enough for the San Jose area as a seventh place locale. Subsequently, San Francisco was put in 13th place with a tech and STEM increase in the past two years. However, from 2001 to 2011, the total number of STEM-related vacancies slightly increased about 0.8%.
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