The age-old contention of just how much talent Tampa Bay has, has risen once again.
CBRE Group, a publicly traded commercial real estate and investment firm, has released its annual Tech Talent Analyzer. The report breaks down the "tech talent score" by the amount of tech-focused jobs in the overall job market, total amount of tech-centered degrees, millennial growth in the market and estimated one-year costs for tech firms.
The Tampa Bay region — Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater — landed at No. 29 with a 43.7 score, following Charlotte, North Carolina with a 44.5 score and preceding Pittsburgh at No. 30 with a 41.7 score.
Tampa Bay shined with millennial growth in the city, landing at the eighth best in the nation for "large tech talent markets," totaling over 50,000 in the labor pool. The region had a 13.6 percent growth, placing behind Raleigh, North Carolina and outpacing Washington, D.C.
When it comes to the brain drain versus brain gain — or the number of tech degree graduates outpacing the tech talent job creation — Tampa Bay held strong. In the region's total labor concentration, 3.9 percent of the jobs are tech jobs, falling in line with New York City, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that all had the same percentage. Tampa Bay's graduates with tech degrees had 56 percent growth in the last five years, totaling 1,808 most recently. The majority of the graduates had computer science degrees (1,414) followed by 284 "other" technology degrees and 110 with math statistics degrees.
Again, the region fell in the middle of the country when it comes to estimated one-year costs for tech firms. It was estimated Tampa Bay firms would spend roughly $39 million on one year for a sample tech firm of 500 employees with a 75,000 square-foot office space. Unsurprisingly, the San Francisco Bay area topped the list with an estimated $62 million cost and Montreal, Quebec, rounded out the list with an estimated $30 million price tag for one year.
Tampa Bay's tech community has had a series of wins when it comes to national recognition: In June, SmartAsset ranked the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater MSA the No. 18 best place to work in technology in the nation and the same month Startup Genome, a top innovation policy advisory and research firm, ranked Tampa Bay as the No. 30 best emerging tech ecosystem in the world.
Read more from the CBRE report here.
