Top Cities, States For Post-COVID-19 Tech Job Postings
As the U.S. starts to recover from impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and the resulting work-from-home movement, the top states and cities for tech job postings, and the growth of such postings, showed significant shifts in early 2021 compared with early 2020, according to the latest hiring survey from Dice.
Tech Job Openings Up As The Country Recovers From The Pandemic
The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic over the last year has had a major negative impact on the U.S. economy. However, for the tech industry, the impact was not as high given the rush by businesses to get their employees set up to work from home, in many cases literally overnight. That helped tech workers mitigate the loss of business from customers that delayed planned IT projects or expansions.
As the country enters the recovery phase of the pandemic, businesses are rushing to restart projects or expand operations based on lessons learned from the past year of pain. And with that comes the next problem: how to find the right people—and enough of them—to fill the positions that are not only reopened but which are newly created to meet growing demand as the economy opens up.
Dice, a Centennial, Colo.-based tech career and recruiting site, used data from the database of Boston-based analytics software company Burning Glass Technologies to analyze over 1.5 million tech job postings in the U.S. early this year, looking at “information technology” jobs with working hours listed as full time, part time, or “not listed,” as well as both permanent or “not listed” positions to get a picture of the state of tech job openings. That data was then combined with analysis from Appcast, a Lebanon, N.H.-based provider of programmatic recruitment advertising technology, which analyzed job postings from Jan. 1 to March 31 to understand the tech job openings.
The result, wrote Dice CEO Art Zeile in the introduction to the company’s analysis, is a feeling that, while tech job openings are still below the level saw in the first quarter of 2020, the light is there at the end of the tunnel after a year-plus of isolation. “Increasing confidence seems to be translating into a widespread demand for talent across a variety of industries and verticals,” Zeile wrote.
To get a feel for the states and cities where the tech jobs are returning, turn the page.
Top States For Tech Job Openings, First-Quarter 2021 Vs. First-Quarter 2020
The Top 10 states in terms of total tech job openings in the first quarter of 2021, according to Dice, include the usual suspects, with very little change over last year:
- California (same rank as a year ago)
- Texas (same rank as a year ago)
- New York (overtook Virginia for No. 3)
- Virginia (fell one spot from a year ago)
- Florida (rose one spot from a year ago)
- Illinois (rose one spot from a year ago)
- North Carolina (fell two spots from a year ago)
- Georgia (rose two spots from a year ago)
- Washington (rose three spots from a year ago)
- Colorado (same rank as a year ago)
The 10 states with the lowest growth in tech job openings in the first quarter of 2021 compared with last year were:
- Wyoming (same rank as a year ago)
- Vermont (same rank as a year ago)
- Maine (fell five spots from a year ago)
- South Dakota (rose one spot from a year ago)
- Montana (rose one spot from a year ago)
- North Dakota (rose one spot from a year ago)
- Alaska (same rank as a year ago)
- West Virginia (rose two spots from a year ago)
- Mississippi (same rank as a year ago)
- New Hampshire (fell seven spots from a year ago)
Top States For Tech Job Opening Growth, February To March 2021
When it comes to which states saw the fastest growth in tech job openings in the first quarter of 2021, the list is quite different compared with the total number of tech job openings:
- Ohio (plus 28%)
- Georgia (plus 27%)
- (tie) Wisconsin and Utah(plus 26%)
- Indiana (plus 25%)
- Oregon (plus 23%)
- (tie) Michigan and New Jersey (plus 19%)
- (tie) Texas and New York (plus 18%)
Key Standouts Regarding Tech Job Postings By State
According to Dice:
- California, because of its top cities for hiring, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, along with its tech strongholds of Silicon Valley and the Los Angeles area sometimes known as Silicon Beach, maintained its top position thanks to 146,000 job postings, according to Dice. Strong growth in the state was due in part to growth in demand for cloud services, and the people to develop them, that came with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
- Texas maintained its No. 2 position in growth of tech job postings in part thanks to the migration of the headquarters of several top tech companies to Austin and Houston over the past year. This includes Oracle, which in December unveiled a plan to move its headquarters to Austin, Texas, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which in December unveiled a plan to move its headquarters to Houston.
- Georgia saw 15 percent growth between February and March 2021, helping the state become the third-largest state in terms of tech job openings, Dice said.
- Washington actually jumped three spots in terms of tech job openings in the first quarter of 2021 compared with a year ago. This was thanks to Microsoft hiring activity, particularly in Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond, as well as by hiring by Amazon, Dice said.
Top Cities For Tech Job Openings, First-Quarter 2021 Vs. First-Quarter 2020
The Top 10 cities in terms of total tech job openings in the first quarter of 2021, according to Dice, include:
- New York (same rank as a year ago)
- Atlanta (rose two spots from a year ago)
- Chicago (same rank as a year ago)
- San Francisco (fell two spots from a year ago)
- Washington, D.C. (same rank as a year ago)
- Seattle (rose seven spots from a year ago)
- Austin, Texas (rose one spot from a year ago)
- Los Angeles (fell one spot from a year ago)
- Dallas (rose one spot from a year ago)
- Charlotte, N.C. (fell four spots from a year ago)
The 10 cities with the lowest growth in tech job openings in the first quarter of 2021 compared with last year were:
- Sacramento, Calif. (fell two spots from a year ago)
- Hartford, Conn. (rose 14 spots from a year ago)
- Huntsville, Ala. (rose seven spots from a year ago)
- Durham, N.C. (fell four spots from a year ago)
- Jacksonville, Fla. (fell nine spots from a year ago)
- Jersey City, N.J. (same rank as a year ago)
- Colorado Springs, Colo. (rose six spots from a year ago)
- Madison, Wis. (rose nine spots from a year ago)
- Milwaukee, Wis. (fell two spots from a year ago)
- Orlando, Fla. (fell two spots from a year ago)
Top Cities For Tech Job Opening Growth, February To March 2021
While the top U.S. cities in terms of tech job opening growth rate during the first quarter of 2021 were heavily concentrated on the East Coast thanks to government spending and Amazon’s plans to build its HQ2 location in Virginia, the top 20 cities in terms of tech job opening growth rate from February to March of 2021 were more spread out, according to Dice:
- Richmond, Va. (plus 68%)
- Alpharetta, Ga. (plus 36%)
- Salt Lake City (plus 33%)
- San Antonio ( plus 32%)
- Columbus, Ohio (plus 31%)
- (tie) Redmond, Wash., Austin, Texas; and Cincinnati, Ohio (plus 29%)
- Atlanta (plus 26%)
- Cleveland, Ohio (plus 25%)
- (tie) Jersey City, N.J.; Indianapolis, Ind.; and Hartford, Conn. (plus 24%)
- Miami (plus 23%)
- (tie) Madison, Wis.; Portland, Ore.; and Milwaukee, Wis. (plus 22%)
- Orlando, Fla. (plus 21%)
- (tie) Dallas and New York City (plus 20%)
Top 15 Cities According to Tech Job Application Rate, First-Quarter 2021
Despite an assumption that the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent work-from-home movement might mean employees would be more interested in applying for jobs away from the tech hubs in California and Texas, that does not yet seem to be the case, Dice said. Those two state had the lion’s share of cities where tech job seekers applied for positions during the first quarter of 2021.
Based on the apply rate, which Dice defined as the percentage of apply clicks that result in a completed application for a position, the top 15 cities by tech job apply rate were:
- San Francisco (13.6%)
- Los Angeles (10.9%)
- Austin, Texas (8.9%)
- Seattle (8.4%)
- Dallas (8.1%)
- Houston (8.0%)
- Miami (7.0%)
- (tie) Orlando, Fla., and Detroit, Mich. (6.8%)
- San Jose, Calif. (6.6%)
- (tie) Atlanta, New York, and Pittsburgh, Pa. (6.5%)
- (tie) Tampa, Fla., and Portland, Ore. (6.4%)
Key Standouts Regarding Tech Job Postings By City
According to Dice:
- In the top 10 cities according to tech job postings, Seattle showed the best increase in rank, jumping seven positions to the No. 6 spot from first-quarter 2020 to first-quarter 2021. That jump was led by the hiring increases primarily by Amazon, but also by Facebook, Salesforce, Deloitte and Accenture.
- However, Seattle’s growth, while strong, was not the best of the 50 cities measured by Dice. The city jumping farthest in rank was Salt Lake City, which saw its rank improve by 26 places over last year. Hartford, Conn., improved its rank by 14 places, followed by Indianapolis by 10 spaces.
- Texas had two cities in the top 10. Austin saw strong growth thanks to hiring by such companies as VMware, Dell, Apple and Facebook, according to Dice, while Dallas enjoyed growth thanks to hiring from Deloitte, IBM and Accenture.