Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Dallas-Fort Worth area ranked fifth in high-tech employment

...based on two-year-old information

By Pegasus News wire

AeA, the nation's largest technology trade association representing all segments of the high-tech industry, ranked the Dallas-Fort Worth area fifth among U.S. cities in high-tech employment, according to the recently released Cybercities 2008: An Overview of the High-Technology Industry in the Nation's Top 60 Cities. The report -- which tracks trends in high-tech employment, wages, establishments, payroll, employment concentration, and wage differential at the metropolitan level -- found that the Dallas-Fort Worth area's high-tech industry employed 176,000 in 2006, the fifth largest in the nation, according to the most current metropolitan data available. DFW also added 2,800 high-tech jobs in 2006, a two percent increase from the previous year.

Also mentioned in the report, the Dallas-Fort Worth area continues to be important for telecommunications services, employing 39,900 in 2006. The area also had the highest communications equipment manufacturing employment in the nation with 13,000 employees working in the field. In addition, DFW's high-tech employees averaged $83,100 in annual wages in 2006, 72 percent higher then the average private sector position.

"As the fifth largest high-tech employment cluster in the nation, the Dallas-Fort Worth area is critical to the tech industry," said AeA Texas Council Chairperson Douglas Bartek. "DFW is attractive because of its unique culture, many universities, large corporations, highly skilled workforce, and, of course, the Dallas Cowboys. As more and more high-tech companies migrate toward the Dallas-Fort Worth area, they learn what the rest of the Dallas-Fort Worth area residents have come to discover -- DFW is a great place to live, work, and play."

Cybercities 2008 shows that the top five cybercities by high-tech employment in 2006 were the New York Metro Area, Washington, DC, San Jose/Silicon Valley, Boston, and Dallas-Fort Worth. The nation's highest tech industry concentration was in San Jose/Silicon Valley, where more than one in four private sector workers were employed by the tech industry. Seattle saw the largest tech industry employment growth, adding 7,800 jobs in 2006.

Source: AeA

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