Report: Tech Employment Creates High Rate of Secondary Employment

A new report from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute finds tech creates strong job growth across a wide swath of economically and geographically diverse regions.

“In terms of bang for the buck, high-tech jobs produce the greatest return across the entire employment market,” economist Ian Hathaway, one of the authors, told the North Bay Business Journal of the finding that tech employment creates higher rates of secondary employment as well.

Among the findings:

• Since the dot-com bust reached bottom in early 2004, employment growth in the high-tech sector has outpaced growth in the private sector as a whole by a ratio of three-to-one.
• High-tech sector employment has also been more resilient in the recent recession-and-recovery period and in the last year. The tech unemployment rate has been lower and wage growth has been stronger. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put tech unemployment at 3.3 percent in the third quarter vs. 7.9 percent in October for the overall economy.
• Employment projections indicate that demand for high-tech workers will be stronger than for workers outside of high-tech at least through 2020. Employment in high-tech industries is projected to grow 16.2 percent between 2011 and 2020, compared with 13.3 percent for the overall economy.

The report is chock-full of stats on the where the jobs are — not necessarily the usual places — wage growth and other factors. A second report will be released in the coming month detailing the impact of high-tech startups on job growth.