Silicon Valley continues to lead in the technology sector, however it is becoming clear that there are new cities emerging as leaders across the country. Homes.com ranked these emerging cities based on a number of characteristics such as industry wages, employment levels, and real estate data.
Overall, the report: New Tech City Index 2016, found that Denver was the best emerging city to live in for tech professionals.
Colorado is the second most educated state in the country, after Massachusetts, with 90% of residents with a high school diploma and 38% earning at least a bachelor’s degree in higher education. The report says that our highly educated workforce lead to Denver’s thriving tech industry.
Here’s the data on Denver from the report:
Average tech wage: $91,861.66
Tech jobs per 1,000 employees: 3.8
Average total employment: 5058.0
Average house price: $486,500
House price change in 5 years: +41.29%
Right behind Denver is Farmingham, MA and Oakland, CA. Boulder also made the list at #10.
Grant Simmons, from Homes.com, said that these rankings help tech professionals move away from the established tech locations where home prices parallel salaries. It shows that they don't have to choose between a great job and a great home. He said, “it’s possible, in Denver, for example, to get a great job and invest in a 3 bedroom home that is likely to increase in value, whereas the same money in the Bay Area will have you living in a truck in the Google parking lot.”
To rank the cities, Homes.com began analyzing statistics from the US Bureau of Labor in 365 cities across the country: average wage of all job types, the average total employed in the area, and the number of jobs per 1,000 for each job type.
Next, they focused on each city's tech sector, calculating and ranking the median wage from six jobs in the tech industry: Computer and Information Systems Manager, Computer Programmer, Software Developer, Hardware Engineer, Network Support Specialist, and Web Developer. The same thing was done to find the average number of these jobs per every 1,000 jobs in each city and the average total employment. All rankings were then combined to get an overall ranking for each city. This gave Homes.com a top 20 ranking of cities for tech jobs.
Finally, the report looked at real estate statistics to look at the big picture of working and living in these cities, and the effect of the tech industry on the housing market. The rankings of jobs, average house price, and house price change were then used to create an overall average position.
The focus of the report was to rank new and emerging tech hubs, so established, large tech areas like San Jose, San Francisco, Washington, New York, and Seattle were excluded from the analysis.
Read the full report from Homes.com here.