Studies say Seattle is one of the ‘best’ tech cities
Two studies released this week show where Seattle’s tech economy ranks in the United States: at the top!
Seattle passed New York City in CBRE’s annual Scoring Tech Talent report to be the third best tech market, only behind San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, D.C. The report looked at number of employees, wages, education levels, and cost of living to rank the top tech cities.
The report showed Seattle saw 50% growth in tech occupations in the last 5 years, these include jobs like Software Developers/Programmers | Computer Support, Database & Systems | Computer & Information Systems Managers and other Technology Engineering-Related. Related non-tech occupation in sales, admin, business operations and marketing saw an 18% increase during that same time.
Seattle also ranked No. 1 of all cities in “educational attainment,” with 59% of the population holding a bachelor’s degree or higher degree.
CBRE Scoring Tech Talent, July 2016 | Credit: CBRE
The report did reveal one major area for improvement: the gender gap in tech employees. Seattle has one of the largest divides in the nation with 22% female and 78% male tech employees.
In additional good news for MS in Computer Science students, Glassdoor also released a study ranking Seattle 1st for highest paid software engineers. The report, 25 Best Paying Cities for Software Engineers, determined ‘Real adjusted salary’ by looking at the ratio of software engineers’ median base salary compared to the federal government’s official cost of living figures in each city.
- Seattle, WA – See Open Jobs
- Real Adjusted Salary: $105,735
- +7.1% above national average cost of living
- Median Base Salary: $113,242
- Job Openings: 4,205
Glassdoor also shared some great advice for aspiring software engineers:
Check out Geekwire’s coverage of both reports:
- Study: Seattle rises to 3rd best tech city in the U.S., surpassing New York
- Seattle No. 1 on Glassdoor’s list of 25 best-paying cities for software engineers
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