Tech Salaries Are Growing In These 6 Cities
‘Overall, remote work and hiring demand for tech talent remain at an all-time high,” according to Hired. ‘However, our data shows that more people are migrating out of big tech hubs into areas with lower cost of living. This has led to an increase in demand and interview requests in areas with lower cost of living.’
San Diego, Austin, and Seattle are among the U.S. cities to see the highest growth in average tech salaries from 2020 to 2021, according to a recent report by online job candidates marketplace Hired. Meanwhile, Dallas, Atlanta and New York were among the cities to see the largest decreases.
The report attributed some of the salary shuffling to embrace of remote work during the global pandemic, hence the increase in pay in cities like San Diego that aren’t normally thought of as tech hubs and the decrease in salary in a city like New York that is home to many technology companies.
Still, a tech worker makes $7,000 more on average in New York compared to San Diego, according to Hired.
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“Overall, remote work and hiring demand for tech talent remain at an all-time high,” according to the report. “However, our data shows that more people are migrating out of big tech hubs into areas with lower cost of living. This has led to an increase in demand and interview requests in areas with lower cost of living.”
Priya Krishnan, chief people officer at Plano, Texas-based Argano, which counts Salesforce, Microsoft and Oracle among its vendor partners, pushed back on the idea of Dallas-area salaries decreasing. Interest in remote candidates has made this an employee’s market.
Argano’s pay packages have increased at least 5 percent since the pandemic. Argano has grown its employee count by about 15 percent. And because of the worker shortage, Argano has looked for candidates even outside of Texas.
“It‘s been extremely hard because everyone went to this remote model,” Krishnan said. “Everyone’s fighting for the few resources. And typically when we’re interviewing one tech person, there’s probably five or six other companies competing for that person.”
New York-based Hired based its report on “proprietary data from real job offers on the platform from companies to tech professionals, collected and analyzed by Hired’s data science team.” The company focused on 21 places worldwide, analyzed more than 525,000 interview requests and 10,000 job offers facilitated through its marketplace from January 2019 through June 2021 and included more than 17,000 participating companies and 180,000 job seekers.
The San Francisco Bay Area still has the highest pay in the U.S. at $165,000, which stayed flat year over year at a .3 percent decrease. Dallas had the lowest.
Here’s what else you need to know.
Highest Average Salary Increase: San Diego
Increase: 9.1 Percent
San Diego saw the highest salary increase among the places included in the Hired report at 9.1 percent, making the average pay $144,000.
However, San Diego still offers tech workers less pay than traditional tech hubs such as San Francisco, Seattle and New York.
San Diego does have a lower cost of living than some traditional tech hubs. According to the report, San Francisco’s average of $165,000 is akin to earning $192,000 in San Diego.
San Diego tied with Austin, Texas, in pay amount. It also paid more on average than Washington, D.C.; Atlanta and Denver.
Partner companies in the San Diego area include Stratus10, an Amazon Web Services partner and Evotek, which is No. 97 on CRN’s 2021 Solution Provider 500.
No. 2 Highest Average Salary Increase: Austin
Increase: 5 Percent
Austin, Texas, saw the second highest salary increase in Hired’s report at 5 percent. The average salary was $144,000, the same as San Diego.
Despite the increase, Texas’ capital city still offers tech workers less pay than traditional tech hubs such as San Francisco, Seattle and New York. It paid more on average than Washington, D.C.; Atlanta and Denver.
With Austin’s lower cost of living, making San Francisco’s tech salary average of $165,000 is akin to making $234,000 in Austin, according to the report.
Austin has attracted tech giants including Oracle and data center owner Digital Realty to relocate from the Bay Area during the pandemic.
Larry Ellison, the chairman, chief technology officer, and co-founder of Oracle, notably did not join the company in Austin. He instead moved to the Hawaiian island of Lanai, which he owns.
No. 3 Highest Average Salary Increase: Seattle
Increase: 4.6 Percent
At 4.6 percent, Seattle saw the third highest salary increase in Hired’s report. Still, tech workers in Seattle make more on average than ones in cities that saw higher gains.
The average pay in the Emerald City was $158,000, the second highest average pay among the places featured in the report, second only to the San Francisco Bay Area. Not a surprise, considering that Seattle is home to tech giant Amazon and nearby Redmond is home to Microsoft.
Seattle’s lower cost of living compared to the Bay Area means that San Francisco’s tech salary average of $165,000 is like making $204,000 in Seattle.
Channel partners that call the Seattle area home include Zones and 2nd Watch.
No. 4 Highest Average Salary Increase: Chicago
Increase: 3.5 Percent
Chicago saw the fourth highest growth in average tech salary at 3.5 percent, making the average salary $133,000, according to the report.
Despite the growth, the Windy City fell toward the lower end of salaries, only beating Dallas among U.S. locations and beating Toronto and London counting all the places included in the report.
Hired considers Chicago’s cost of living less than that of the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area’s $165,000 average tech salary is equivalent to $190,000 in Chicago.
Channel partner companies that call Chicago home include Ahead and Deft, formerly known as ServerCentral Turing Group, or SCTG.
Chicago, Atlanta and New York were the top U.S. cities for technology job postings volume in the second quarter, as tech hirings surged nationwide, according to a report from Dice.
And recent investments in the area from Big Tech include Microsoft’s plans to spend $200 million in building two data centers just outside Chicago at a former AT&T campus.
No. 5 Highest Average Salary Increase: Washington, D.C.
Percent: 3 Percent
Washington, D.C., saw an average tech salary of $136,000, according to the report. That’s 3 percent higher than 2020, the fifth highest increase among places analyzed by Hired.
The area continues to attract investment from tech giants, with Google planning a new office in nearby Reston, Va., and Amazon working on its HQ2 campus in nearby Arlington, Va.
Channel partner companies that call the Washington, D.C., area home include Red Trace Technologies and Ellucian.
No. 6 Highest Average Salary Increase: Los Angeles
Increase: 2.3 Percent
Los Angeles saw the sixth highest increase in average tech salary from 2020 to 2021. Its average pay of $149,000 marks a 2.3 percent increase year over year.
The City of Angels fell toward the higher end of salaries in places analyzed by Hired, landing at No. 4. And it has a lower cost of living than the San Francisco Bay Area, making the $165,000 average salary in the Bay Area equivalent to $201,000 in Los Angeles.
Channel partners based in the Los Angeles area include SADA Systems and Network Solutions Provider.
No. 3 Highest Average Salary Decrease: New York
Decrease: 1 Percent
New York saw the third highest decrease in average tech salary at 1 percent, perhaps due to the embrace of remote work and employers looking outside tech hubs for talent.
Despite the decrease, The Big Apple still has the third highest average pay among the places included in the report at $151,000. Only the San Francisco Bay Area and Seattle offered higher average salaries. The next highest city after New York was Los Angeles.
A strike against New York is its high cost of living, deemed higher than living in the Bay Area, according to Hired. The Bay Area’s $165,000 average tech salary is akin to making $157,000 in New York.
Still, New York has seen a wave of investment activity from Big Tech, with Google paying $2.1 billion to purchase Manhattan’s St. John’s Terminal as the anchor of its new 1.7 million-square-foot Hudson Square campus, home to its largest office outside of California. IBM’s upcoming spin off of its managed infrastructure services business, Kyndryl, will be headquartered in New York instead of Armonk.
Channel partners based in New York include Electric and PKA Technologies.
No. 2 Highest Average Salary Decrease: Atlanta
Decrease: 5.5 Percent
Atlanta saw the second highest decrease in average tech salary at 5.5 percent, beat only by Dallas. On average, tech workers in Atlanta made $136,000, according to Hired.
An advantage to Atlanta is its lower cost of living compared to some of the other places analyzed by Hired. For example, the San Francisco Bay Area’s average $165,000 tech salary is equivalent to making $242,000 in Atlanta.
Channel partners located in the Atlanta area include Lemongrass and Edge Solutions.
Highest Average Salary Decrease: Dallas
Decrease: 9.5 Percent
Dallas saw the largest drop in average salary among places analyzed by Hired. The 9.5 percent decrease year over year put the average pay in Dallas at $124,000.
Not only did Dallas have the largest drop, but it also had the lowest pay among the U.S. cities included in the report. Toronto had a lower average pay at $117,000, and London’s 74,000 pound average salary converts to about $102,000.
What gives Dallas an edge over other places included in the report is its low cost of living. The San Francisco Bay Area’s average salary of $165,000 is equivalent to making $243,000.
Channel partners located in the Dallas area include Argano and Dallas Digital Services.