Austin Ranks 6th in Tech Talent report

The City of Austin ranks 6th out of all the North American Tech Talent Markets. The Commercial real-estate firm CBRE has rated cities in the US and Canada for their ability to attract and grow talent. By their count Austin has a Tech talent labor pool of more than 72-thousand which makes up for about 7{2db634631ef8bd3f096060bc7daa4fc6677d16e616113d8c02bec6b420e3105c} of the city’s overall labor force. From 2013 to 18 they say the local tech labor pool has grown by more than 12{2db634631ef8bd3f096060bc7daa4fc6677d16e616113d8c02bec6b420e3105c}.

(Photo:Shutterstock/ Andrey_Popov)

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Austin again ranked in the top 10 on CBRE’s Tech Talent Scorecard, part of its seventh-annual Scoring Tech Talent Report, which ranks 50 U.S. and Canadian markets according to their ability to attract and grow tech talent.

Tech labor concentration – or the percentage of total employment – is an influential factor in how “tech-centric” a market is and its growth potential. Austin has a tech talent labor pool of 72,360, or approximately 7{2db634631ef8bd3f096060bc7daa4fc6677d16e616113d8c02bec6b420e3105c} of its overall labor force. This is almost double the tech talent labor concentration level of New York, NY. Overall, the Austin tech talent labor pool has grown 12.6{2db634631ef8bd3f096060bc7daa4fc6677d16e616113d8c02bec6b420e3105c} from 2013 to 2018.

Austin also stood out in the report in a number of other key areas:

• Availability and development capacity of commercial space – Approximately 25,860,323 million-square-feet of new office space is planned or proposed in the Austin area.
• The rent-to-tech wage ratio is still relatively low at 16.1{2db634631ef8bd3f096060bc7daa4fc6677d16e616113d8c02bec6b420e3105c}. For comparison, other top markets like Manhattan or San Francisco Bay Area have rent-to-tech wage ratios of 43.6{2db634631ef8bd3f096060bc7daa4fc6677d16e616113d8c02bec6b420e3105c} and 26.4{2db634631ef8bd3f096060bc7daa4fc6677d16e616113d8c02bec6b420e3105c} respectively.
• Austin ranks as a top market for educational attainment with 51{2db634631ef8bd3f096060bc7daa4fc6677d16e616113d8c02bec6b420e3105c} of urban residents over the age of 25 with bachelor’s degrees or higher. This is much higher than the national average of 31.3{2db634631ef8bd3f096060bc7daa4fc6677d16e616113d8c02bec6b420e3105c}.
• According to analysts, Austin continues to see a very high quality of labor in the tech sector with a moderate labor cost making Austin an attractive market for tech firms.
• Analysts also find that Austin is poised to become one of the largest tech growth markets in the next 5 to 10 years.

“As an economy and a community, Austin continues to prove an attractive location for tech talent,” says Erin Morales, Senior Vice President at CBRE in Austin and member of the Tech and Media Practice. “Demand from tech companies shows no sign of slowing and we are now seeing employers with a large tech workforce targeting submarkets outside traditional Austin tech hubs, such as east and south, in addition to continued demand in Austin’s Central Business District. It is no surprise that Austin has ranked high on this list every year since its inception. Companies continue to find that Austin can provide them high-quality labor at a lower overhead, compared with other top markets, in a community that their employees and their families want to live in.”

The top 10 tech talent markets: