Here’s a hint for high school graduates or college students still majoring in indecision: Put down that guitar or book of poetry and pick up a laptop. Study computer science or engineering, and plan to move to a big city.
A new survey out this week from AeA, the group formerly known as the American Electronics Assn., reports that jobs in the technology industry are growing at a healthy clip, especially in large cities. The organization’s Cybercities 2008 survey says that 51 cities added high-technology jobs in 2006, the most recent year for which data were available. The survey tracks new jobs related to the creation of tech products, including fields such as chip manufacturing and software engineering. It is the AeA’s first such survey since 2000, which was taken before the crash of the tech bubble that created so many jobs in the late 1990s.
And while slowing economic conditions have dulled the pace of growth since the 2006 data were collected, AeA researcher Matthew Kazmierczak says it’s far from turning south. “Nationally, there are some data that show the rate of growth has slowed since 2006, but it hasn’t gone negative,” he says.
The leader in number of jobs gained is Seattle, home to such tech companies as Amazon, RealNetworks, and software giant Microsoft, based in nearby Redmond, Wash. Seattle added a net 7,800 jobs during the period surveyed, followed by the New York and Washington [D.C.] metro areas, which added more than 6,000 jobs apiece. The fastest-growing area on a percentage basis was the combined metro area of Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., which saw its tech-employment figures grow by 12%. Riverside-San Bernardino benefited from higher costs of living in nearby Los Angeles and Orange County.
Salary Strength
The highest concentration of technology workers — 286 for every 1,000 workers — was in, no…