Hartford has the 10th-fastest-growing pools of tech talent in the country, according to a new report from commercial real estate brokerage CBRE.
The firm’s Scoring Tech Talent Report ranks 50 American and Canadian markets in their ability to attract and grow tech talent. Hartford’s tech talent labor force grew 3 percentage points faster in 2017 and 2018, at 4.7 percent than the previous two-year period (2015 and 2016), when it grew at 1.7 percent.
The report found that the 10 fastest-growing markets increased their tech labor pools by between 33 percent and 54 percent over the past five years.
“It may come as a surprise to many, but Hartford continues to be a top 10 momentum market for tech talent in the U.S. and Canada, due to its growing labor pool and lower costs than many larger markets,” Michael Puzzo, Senior Vice President in CBRE’s Hartford office, said in a statement.
The report also found that Hartford is a tech talent creator. In the last five years, the metro produced nearly 8,100 more tech graduates than the market could employ, making it a brain drain market. It also found that, in the last five years, the tech labor pool in Hartford increased 9.4 percent to 25,770 employees in 2018.
The 10 markets seeing the biggest growth in their tech talent between 2015-2016 and 2017-2018 were:
- Orlando, Florida
- San Diego, California
- Chicago
- Cleveland, Ohio
- Long Island, New York
- Denver, Colorado
- Portland, Oregon
- Los Angeles
- Detroit, Michigan
- Hartford
