Does Tech Create Jobs Around the U.S.? Maps And Graphs And Charts, Oh My!

It’s widely believed in policy circles that technology creates jobs around the U.S., especially outside the startup-happy zone of Silicon Valley. But, searching for statistical nuggets in a needlestack of words is daunting–and a little boring. So, technology lobby, Engine Advocacy, and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, are here to inform and dazzle you with multi-colored graphs (plus some egregious copy and pasting on our part) [PDF].

The big take-aways are:

1. Concentrated tech centers are scattered all around the U.S., but (not surprisingly) on the coasts.

us-tech-map

2. There are a lot of surprising tech zones, such as Wichita Kansas and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Cities with the percentage share of tech jobs range from 28.8 in San Jose to Santa Ana-Irvine area, in Orange County (8.2).

top 25 cities

3. Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) job opportunities have continued to expand up to 10% growth since 2000, while total occupations have hovered around 0%. Life Sciences is king of growth at 42.1%, with Computer and Math Sciences at around 20% and “Engineering and Related” slightly negative.

jobs-stem-growth

stem changes by field

4. Probably the most interesting finding is that one tech job supposedly creates, on average, 4.3 jobs in the surrounding area in other fields. The so-called “local multiplier” is measured by the change in employment in a randomly selected non-tech field at two points and weighted by the national change in overall growth in that particular sector (geeks can read the technical paper here). Berkeley Economist, Enrico Moretti, outlines the effect in more detail, in his new book The New Geography of Jobs.

jobs multiplier tech

Download complete. Now that you’ve done your homework, here’s a picture of an adorable corgi:

corgi-adorable