A new tech jobs report by careers site Dice.com found that Houston leads major U.S. cities in tech job postings.
The Bayou City saw a 45.6% increase in postings year-over-year from January to October, topping a list including Orlando, Florida (42.7%), Detroit (41.6%) Miami (33.2%) and Irvine, California (33.2%), according to the Dec. 13 report. Fifteen cities saw double-digit year-over-year job posting growth.
Dice selected Houston alongside Orlando and Detroit as its tech hubs to showcase for the December report. The report highlighted Google’s plans to open a sales office on Washington Ave., first announced in 2020, as well as the presence of other major technology employers such as Amazon's (NYSE: AMZN) Houston Tech Hub, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), and Siemens, which was tapped to engineer a renewable fuels plant southwest of the city in December.
Houston’s startup ecosystem was also cited as a factor in the city's job posting growth. The downtown Innovation Corridor was noted in Dice’s report as a point in the city’s favor. Although no specific incubators were named, the report named the Texas Medical Center — set to open its 500-acre BioPort campus in 2023— and Rice University as draws.
Since 2019, Houston has seen the launch of the Ion, a 300,000 square-foot innovation hub on Main Street; The Cannon, an accelerator hub, has opened multiple locations; and Boston-based climate incubator Greentown Labs opened its second U.S. location in the Bayou City. Areas outside of the city limits have seen growth in innovation hubs, with The Cannon opening its latest new location in Montgomery County and a group of incubator hubs partnering with the Fort Bend Economic Development Council to create the Fort Bend Innovation Council.
In the report’s employer trends section, Dice found health care and aerospace as two sectors demanding tech employees. The nonprofit Center for Houston’s Future released a report Dec. 9 showing an increase in biotech and life sciences jobs in 2022, continuing an increasing trend dating back to 2015.
The average tech salary in Houston is $100,341 and sought-after positions include software developers and engineers, business analysts, and .NET developers, per the report. National data showed demand for software development engineers grew by 139.5%, Dice found. Houston Business Journal research found the largest public tech employer in the city is Hewlett Packard Enterprise, with 62,252 employees in 2021.
The report was released against the backdrop of layoffs in the U.S. tech sector, with over 150,000 workers laid off as of December, per the tracking site Layoffs.fyi. In the previous 18 months, Dice’s report found new tech postings in Houston steadily increased from May 2021 to June 2022, where they peaked at 7,531 before slipping down to 5,491 new postings in October.
Texas was the only state to see three major cities in the top 10 cities for tech job postings, with Austin recording a 9.6% year-over-year increase and Dallas showing a 7.7% year-over-year increase.
