Dallas deemed No. 3 fastest growing tech hub amid the pandemic

DALLAS, TX – When Americans think of tech hubs, Silicon Valley or even Austin may initially come to mind. However, Dallas appears to be making a play for tech-hub status.

Citing data from career platform LinkedIn, the Axios news website reports that Dallas-Fort Worth has seen a healthy influx of tech workers since the start of the pandemic. In fact, DFW ranks third among 14 major U.S. labor markets for the number of relocating software and IT workers between March 2020 and February 2021 compared with the same period a year earlier.

Miami grabs the No. 1 spot for the gain in software and IT workers (up 15.4 percent) between the two periods, with Houston in second place (10.4 percent) and Dallas-Fort Worth in third place (8.6 percent), according to the LinkedIn data.

“Young engineers and recent college graduates see Miami, Houston, and Philadelphia — not San Francisco, New York, or Seattle — as the hot new places to jumpstart a technology or creative economy career,” Axios notes.

At the bottom of the barrel sits the San Francisco Bay Area, which suffered a loss of 34.8 percent when comparing the arrival and departure of software and IT workers. Interestingly, Austin experienced a loss of 8 percent in this category.

The shift from traditional tech hub to emerging tech hub is likely to continue as employers and employees alike further embrace remote work. A survey commissioned in April by the nonprofit One America Works found 47 percent of tech workers had moved during the pandemic. In addition, 3 in 10 tech workers anticipate living somewhere different than they did during the pandemic.

Tech trade group CompTIA says the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area is currently home to 373,695 tech workers. Between 2019 and 2020, the metro added 4,466 tech jobs, the group says, and it is poised to almost double that — 9,487 new jobs — in 2021, according to CompTIA’s projection.