Chicago tech's solid week of PR continued Friday with yet another report showing growth in the city's technology industry.
The Chicago metro area added 10,000 tech jobs between 2013 and 2015, according to a Brookings Institute study, a 5.8% compound annual growth rate. The region had the 9th biggest increase in number of tech jobs, behind San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Dallas, Boston, Austin, Seattle and Los Angeles.
Chicago's rate of job growth outpaced both Boston and Seattle, which grew 5.2% and 5.3% a year, respectively.
The Brookings report follows a survey by KPMG that found Chicago was the sixth strongest tech hub outside of Silicon Valley, according to business executives and venture capitalists who were asked to name the cities they think will rival Silicon Valley/San Francisco over the next four years. Also this week, the Illinois Science & Technology Coalition found that Illinois universities are pumping out startups faster than any time in recent memory, having helped create 800 new startups in the last five years.
The Chicago metro area also saw its share of national tech jobs increase from 2010 to 2015, according to Brookings. Its share rose by less than 0.5%, which might not sounds like much, but it was one of only a handful of cities to see its share increase as the Bay Area continues to add to its piece of the tech employment pie. In fact, 86 of the largest 100 metros have either seen their share of the national tech sector stay the same or actually shrink since 2010, according to Brookings, and 6 cities lost jobs in absolute terms.
While the results seem encouraging, it begs the question Chicago's tech scene has been grappling with for years: Being the third largest city in the US, is Chicago's tech sector growing as fast as it should? While the startup scene is on the rise, Chicago still lacks some of the major tech employers that exist in Seattle (Amazon, Microsoft) and Austin (Dell), which help drive overall tech employment numbers. But nevertheless, things appear to be headed in the right direction for Chicago tech.
Public domain image
