Greater Los Angeles has reversed its high-tech “brain drain” reputation, jumping into the top three markets with the biggest growth spurt in high-tech software and service jobs.
Indeed, Los Angeles County enjoyed a nearly threefold boost in these coveted jobs from the prior two-year period, according to a new report from commercial real estate and services and investment firm CBRE.
The Los Angeles area ranked No. 3, behind Montreal and Pittsburgh, with a 13 percent momentum gain.
In Orange County, tech employment surged 40.7 percent from 2005 to 2016, making it the top-growing industry there, the report said. In terms of attracting graduates with tech degrees, the Orange County/LA region stood at No. 3 with a 26.7 percent jump in grads from 2011 to 2015.
The Los Angeles area is benefitting specifically from the growth of small tech niches, as well as from the billions of dollars in spending on original media content for tech companies.
“The trends align with the tech industry’s overall booming job growth,” said Jeff Pion, vice chairman at CBRE. “The sector’s 6 percent annual rate is four times the national average – and that’s good news for office leasing activity. Our forecast for high-tech job growth this year is slower than in years past but it is still above the national average.”
Within the Tech-30 — or the 30 leading technology markets in the U.S. and Canada — high-tech software/services job creation has overwhelmingly outperformed the national average over the past two years, according to CBRE’s Scoring Tech Talent report.
The tech industry faces stiff competition for college-educated workers, whose unemployment rate is now at 2.7 percent, CBRE’s talent report revealed. That situation is expected to ease soon, however, as the percentage of college graduates with high-tech degrees soared 82 percent in the five years leading up to 2016, according to the latest data available.
“In 2017, the tighter labor supply and sustained demand for technical skills slowed high-tech job growth to 3.4 percent annually — still more than twice the national average,” Pion said. “With a more business-friendly political environment, the tech industry is on track to add 100,000 jobs this year.”
So how should tech companies plan for the future?
“For now, the markets that attract high-tech companies are the ones that offer access to a highly educated workforce in geographically desirable areas to live in,” said Pion.
That’s positive news for regions that aim to keep highly sought tech workers close to home, energizing the local community and economy.
