Part of the city’s rise in the rankings came from a feature of the city’s economy: its diversity of industries. CBRE tracked both the size of the tech workforce and the concentration of tech jobs—that is, their percentage of total employment. New York had about 370,000 tech jobs, the second-highest of all 32 large metro areas the report tracked. But its tech job concentration ranked third from the bottom at 4%, compared to the staggering 33% for the Bay Area.
What’s more, just 37% of New York’s tech workers actually toil away in the core tech industry itself (think Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc.), the report found. Another 19%, or more than 73,000 people, are employed in finance, insurance or real estate. Still more work in health care, professional services or government.
As a result, when tech employers shed about 200,000 of jobs this year, city tech workers likely found themselves protected from the worst of the cuts. Tech talent comprised only about one-quarter of such cuts, according to a statistic from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which tracks layoffs. And tech talent working at non-tech employers—which New York City has in spades—were spared layoffs all together.
The data help explain why New York City tech workers have not seen much upheaval despite the headlines about layoffs.
“You might see X tech company did major layoffs and they think that’s a lot of tech talent,” Chris Volney, managing director of client strategy with in CBRE’s labor analytics group, said in a filmed interview released with the report. But, Volney added, the vast majority of each layoff affected those working in marketing, customer success or sales at tech firms, rather than engineers themselves.
The report also heralded other pluses of being in the tech industry in New York City. The metro area graduates the most people with bachelor’s or higher degrees in tech (such as computer science, engineering and cybersecurity) in the entire U.S. In 2021, there were 22,719 graduates with tech degrees, up 28% since 2017, the report found. The city’s core tech workforce is also diverse, with only 44% of workers identifying as white and 25% of whom are women. In the Bay Area, 31% of tech workers are white, and 23% are women.
There are some unappealing aspects of the city’s market, too, including the cost of living. The number of people in their 20s—a core demographic of tech talent—fell by over 10% between 2016 and 2021, the report found. In other large tech markets, including Salt Lake City, Raleigh-Durham and Toronto, this demographic increased over the same period. And New York is expensive. The metro area ranks second in terms of operating costs of all 50 markets that CBRE tracked, with companies spending an average of $5 million per month in rent.
Volney pointed out that tech employers looking for a deal might consider another city in New York state, such as Albany. Volney called the state capital an“emerging cluster” for tech talent, especially for those building programs using artificial intelligence.
