America’s second techiest city may surprise some

The highest concentration of IT professionals in the U.S. is — you guessed it — in Silicon Valley. But naming the No. 2 spot isn’t as easy, and the answer might surprise you.

The runner-up isn’t a well-known tech center like Boston or Seattle/Redmond; it’s the Washington metro area.

“It kind of belies some of the perceptions of where the hiring is, where people work in this field,” said John Challenger, president of Chicago-based outsourcing firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “[Many typically] think that most people in IT work in Silicon Valley, and they might add in Washington state, Seattle, and maybe Austin,” he said.

Data for 2006 from the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey (ACS), released just last month, reveal what could be called a metropolitan area’s “TQ” (technology quotient) — how “techie” a region’s overall workforce is, based on the number of self-reported computer professionals. And some of the results turn stereotypes upside down.

Roughly 6 percent of the D.C. metro area workforce is made up of “computer specialists,” compared with 8.3 percent in Silicon Valley. The third-highest concentration of IT workers is in Raleigh/Cary, N.C., at 5.3 percent of the workforce, followed closely by Boulder, Colo., and Huntsville, Ala., each at 5.2 percent. The remainder of the top 10 technology worker areas is rounded out, in order, by Bloomington/Normal, Ill.; Trenton-Ewing, N.J.; Austin-Round Rock, Texas; Manchester-Nashua, N.H.; and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, Wash.

Not everyone is surprised by the latest numbers.

“We always thought we belong in the same breath as the Silicon Valley folks … because we always had a significant workforce in IT,” said Richard Doud, president of the Arlington (Va.) Chamber of Commerce. “There’s a lot of IT jobs in the area. There’s a lot going on here.”

That’s due largely to the heavy concentration of government agencies and contractors. In addition, companies tend to congregate where there already are government facilities, educational facilities and other businesses. “Companies like to group,” he said. “It has to do with the availability of workers.”

Despite the high percentage of tech professionals in the area, hiring can be a challenge. “There are a lot of IT people around here,” agreed Jay Atkinson, an Alexandria, Va.-based business consultant who has done IT hiring as a chief financial officer at three different companies. “There’s a tremendous demand for them … though they can be hard to find.”

The Census Bureau data also shows that IT worker pay tends to reflect the percentage of techies in the workforce. The annual average salary for computer and information systems managers in Silicon Valley as of May 2006 was $139,460, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the D.C. metro area, that figure was $122,950. Around Raleigh, N.C., it was $102,880.

In terms of the overall number of IT workers, the New York metropolitan area dwarfs both Silicon Valley and D.C. — but that’s because of the large size of that region’s workforce as a whole. New York, along with northern New Jersey and Long Island, is home to about 221,020 IT workers, but they make up only about 2.5 percent of the area’s total workforce. The Washington metro area has the second highest number of IT workers overall, at 170,429, according to the 2006 ACS. Metropolitan Chicago is third, with 116,374 IT workers, but they make up only 2.6 percent of that area’s total workforce.

In Raleigh, the area’s relatively large number of top-tier colleges regularly cranks out swarms of tech-educated workers, helping to boost the portion of IT professionals in the workforce, according to Ken Atkins at the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. He also cites “quality of life, the educational system from K-12 through the universities and … the number of good jobs.” Affordable housing, especially compared with Silicon Valley and Washington, may also play a part, as do the number of IT-hungry companies — including Fidelity Investments, Network Appliance, and Credit Suisse Group — that have opened up shop there in recent years.

Bloomington, Ill., which has a relatively small workforce compared with the others, has attracted IT workers in part because it has been named in several lists of “best” and “most affordable” places to live, said Mike Malone, executive director of the McLean County Chamber of Commerce.

“We’ve been blessed in the area with a good transportation network and a low cost of living,” Malone said. “With technology [businesses], you don’t have to be in any particular area [of the nation] to be successful. You have to have communication lines and data lines to do your work.”

McLean County, two hours south of Chicago and two hours north of St. Louis, Mo., is the fasting growing county in Illinois, he said.

Tech-heavy companies such as State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. and Country Insurance & Financial Services employ many IT workers, noted Tom Moy, systems director at State Farm. Given the smaller overall population, those companies have a relatively larger effect on employment numbers.

Huntsville’s fifth-place standing is due to the area’s longtime connection to the aerospace and defense industries, according to John Southerland, spokesman at the local Chamber of Commerce. “It’s known as a high-tech area, and that dates back to the 1950s. It’s been a magnet for high-tech workers ever since. Obviously, the space program was a catalyst,” he says.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.