Publication

This policy brief reports the top 25 tech counties in the country, based on the 2015 PPI Tech/Info Job Index.

The top three counties are in the Bay Area—first is San Francisco Country, followed by Santa Clara County (Silicon Valley), and San Mateo County. Travis County, home of Austin, Texas, takes fourth place, with Utah County (Provo, Utah) ranking fifth.

The top 25 list also includes well-known tech hubs such as King County (Seattle), New York County (New York City), Middlesex County (Cambridge, Mass.) and Suffolk County (Boston). However, the PPI Tech/Info Job Index also identifies some unexpectedly strong performers, including East Baton Rouge Parish (Baton Rouge, La.) and St. Charles County (St. Louis, Mo. Metro Area).

This is the third year that we have ranked counties by the PPI Tech/Info Job Index, which is based on the number of jobs added in their tech/info industries from 2011 to 2014, relative to the size of the local economy. PPI defines the tech/info sector as including telecom, tech, and content industries, including wired and wireless telecom, Internet search and publishing, and movie production (see complete list of included industries in the methodology section).

As in previous years, we find that the local economies with the highest PPI Tech/Info Job Index tend to have a faster growth rate of non-tech jobs. This result supports the proposition that benefits from a strong tech/info sector spill over to the rest of the local economy.

Download “2015.12-Mandel-Di-Ionno_The-2015-PPI-Tech-Info-Job-Ranking”