News
Seattle’s got talent: New report highlights how ‘techie’ the region is really is
By Rob Smith July 1, 2022
Mention Seattle to someone in, say, New York and three things come to mind: coffee, rain and technology.
Stereotypes, sure, but truisms nonetheless. Now comes a report by commercial real estate firm CBRE that Seattle leads all markets across the United States in tech-job creation.
The Seattle-Bellevue-Tacoma area added 45,560 technology jobs between 2016 and 2021, a 32% increase. Throughout North America, only Toronto added more jobs.
Overall, Seattle ranked No. 2 for the strength of its tech market as measured by 13 different indicators, according to CBRE’s 2022 Scoring Tech Talent Report. The San Francisco Bay Area ranked No. 1.
“Growth follows talent, and I think we are just getting started,” says Bill Cooper, senior vice president with CBRE’s Tech & Media Practice in Bellevue. “It’s not just traditional tech driving the job growth. We are seeing a lot of activity from biotech and gaming — sectors equally reliant on tech talent for success.”
Seattle has more than 50 gaming companies, according to gamesmith.com, and brokerage reports routinely tout the strength of the regional biotech/life sciences market. CRBE noted that the Puget Sound region ranked No. 9 in the nation for life-sciences talent, particularly data and medical scientists.
In June, developers broke ground on a 197,000-square-foot life sciences development at the base of the Space Needle that will anchor Seattle’s new life sciences hub: the South Lake Union Innovation District.
The 127-page Scoring Tech Talent Report found that Seattle has about 190,000 total tech jobs, or 9.9% of overall employment, with an average annual salary of more than $122,000. Almost two-thirds of those workers are software engineers, which CBRE calls the “most coveted skill” among tech employers across the country. Seattle has the highest concentration of software engineers working in the tech industry (as opposed to manufacturing, financial services and others).
Seattle also scored highly for its percentage of both women and millennial tech workers. Interestingly, Seattle was one of only a handful of cities that created substantially more jobs than tech degree graduates, a positive development in Cooper’s view.
“Top talent can choose where they live and work,” Cooper says. “They have been moving to this region for years.”
Two downsides: Office and apartment rents in Seattle are among the highest in the U.S.
The news all bodes well for the future, but economic headwinds being what they are, several tech companies recently laid off workers or decided not to fill open jobs. Sales technology company Outreach, freight-technology company Convoy and data-management company Qumolo are just three firms who announced cuts this past summer, and Microsoft and Google temporarily paused hiring for certain positions.