Kansas City ranks #30 overall on CBRE’s 2021 Scoring Tech Talent Report as North American tech-talent employment weathered the pandemic better than most other professions.
Numerous indicators underscore the resilience of tech talent during COVID-19. These occupations registered job growth of 0.8 percent in 2020 in the U.S. while non-tech occupations declined by 5.5 percent. Software developers and programmers were the most in demand tech-job category last year, adding 85,000 U.S. jobs for a 4.8 percent growth rate from a year earlier. Beyond the tech industry itself, those that added tech workers last year include financial activities, professional & business services, and government.
Kansas City has the 29th largest tech talent labor pool nationally with 52,630 tech workers, a 5.1 percent increase from 2015. Following the pandemic, factors including the size of a market’s talent labor pool is a key indicator of a region’s economic recovery.
“The tech industry has shown its adaptability across the U.S. during COVID-19 and Kansas City has been no exception,” said Brian Bacon, CBRE first vice president in Kansas City.
“There are several factors to this, including Kansas City’s low operating costs for tech companies, low cost of living for tech employees, our strong Midwest work ethic culture and the growing millennial population within the city. As a result, Kansas City has grown into becoming one of the largest large tech talent markets.”
CBRE’s annual report, now in its ninth year, ranks the top 50 North American markets by analyzing 13 measures of their ability to attract and develop tech talent, including tech graduation rates, tech-job concentration, tech labor pool size, and labor and real estate costs, among others. CBRE also ranks the Next 25 emerging tech markets on a narrower set of criteria. Tech talent is defined as 20 key tech professions -- such as software developers and systems and data managers – across all industries.
“Many factors already are in place to fuel strong tech-talent job growth this year and beyond, including demand for tech to facilitate continued remote work, robust e-commerce growth and streaming services,” said Todd Husak, managing director of CBRE’s Tech & Media Practice Group. “Big tech markets will gain from their established pipelines of tech graduates and many workers’ return to city centers. Smaller markets will reap benefits from their cost advantages in labor and real estate as well as the tech industry’s embrace of remote work for certain employees.”
Kansas City stood out in the report in a number of other key areas:
The average wage for tech-talent workers increased to $86,770, a six percent since 2015.
The millennial population aged 23 to 38 increased by 12.5 percent (53,932 people) since 2014.
Kansas City offers affordable living for tech-talent workers, with the average annual apartment rent amounting to 14.3 percent of the average tech-talent wage. That ranks 38th among the 50 largest tech-talent markets.
Overall, Kansas City ranks among the most affordable for expenses of operating a tech company. The average one-year cost for operating a 500-employee tech company occupying 75,000 sq. ft. in Kansas City amounts to $39.5 million. That ranks 10th most affordable among the top 50 tech-talent markets.
Overall, the top five markets for tech talent in 2020 were the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Toronto and New York City, all large markets with a tech labor pool of more than 50,000.