A look at where the best tech employment odds are

Krystal Peak · July 5, 2012 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/2816

While New York, Silicon Valley and LA have a lot of tech jobs, other cities have better hiring odds

Silicon Valley and New York City technology companies aren't the only places still clamoring to hire new people -- cities such as Charlotte, NC; Portland, Ore.; Pittsburg, Penn.; and Richmond, Virginia have a lot of tech job openings according to the latest employment outlook by Simply Hired.

While Simply Hired listed technology as the industry with 6th most jobs still available, with 143,644 job openings, there are still some areas of the country that are far better than others to be looking for those jobs. The sectors with more openings than technology were financial services, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing, and retail.

Tech job openings have experienced a month-over-month change of 8.2% growth but a year-over-year drop of 3.9%.

Nationally, job openings were up 9.2% from May and 13.3% from June of 2011. Also the ratio of job-seekers to jobs has stayed even at 3:1. Jobs were also up in all major metro areas, and competition for jobs decreased in 12 of them, including New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Denver, and Las Vegas.

Just focusing on the tech sector, the cities that have the most jobs are New York, Silicon Valley and Washington D.C. -- with each city already having a substantial number of jobs and the number continuing to growth over time.

When specifically looking at the percentage increase of jobs, the cities showing the most growth are Houston, Oakland, and Charlotte.

If you are playing your odds and want the best chance of gaining a job based on the number of jobs being offered to the number of people searching, Baltimore, Charlotte, Portland and Detroit seem to have the best odds in tech.

Conversely, Birmingham, Newark, Little Rock, and Riverside/San Bernardino look like the least fruitful areas to search for software jobs in tech.

For tech central -- the San Francisco Bay Area -- the jobs that continue to top the charts with the most job openings this month are Apple with 1,145 job openings (up 2.1% from last month), Google with 1,114 (up 30.2% since June), Sutter Health has 1,027 job openings listed (down 16.8% from June), Cisco Systems with 826 jobs (down 12%), and VMware with 717 jobs (a stark 20.6% drop).

So with four of the top five companies with substantial job openings still firmly in the tech center it appears that the Silicon Valley is not backing down from its tech Mecca status any time soon.

Here is the total rundown on best and worst places to search for jobs in tech.

Best markets to go on a tech job search: