State of the Tech Industry in the South: What Our Numbers Show

7.3 million: number of tech occupation workers employed across industries in the U.S. economy

6.9 million: number of workers employed in the U.S. tech industry.

492,550: number of tech business establishments

52,434: the number of tech patents granted during the most recently available year for patent data

$108,900: average annual wages of U.S. tech industry workers, more than double the average national wage

Do you know the numbers for your city? State? Region? CompTIA has them all in their latest Cyberstates 2017 report.

The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is a not-for-profit technology association that has been creating the Cyberstates report for nearly 20 years to serve as a reference tool for various stakeholders at every level. Cyberstates 2017 is based on CompTIA’s analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Economic Modeling Specialists International (EMSI), Burning Glass Technologies, and Hoovers.

The entire site is interactive, so it’s truly best to go on the Cyberstates site (scroll to the bottom), but here are some interesting findings related to the Southeast:

• Florida ranks as fourth in the nation for largest tech sector employment (318,340), but North Carolina comes in third for its tech-sector job growth (5.9 percent).  Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana and Tennessee all experienced net job losses in this sector.
• After California and Texas, Florida has the most number of tech establishments.
• Mississippi and North Carolina rank in the top 5 for percentage of women employed in the tech sector. In looking at the metropolitan areas only, Memphis had the ‘most gender balanced’ ratio.  Approximately 43 percent of database administrators and 41 percent computer systems analysts in Memphis are women.
• Among metropolitan areas, Atlanta comes in at number 5 for most tech establishments.
  
• While Tennessee as a state saw a net loss of tech sector jobs, Nashville saw a gain of 1.8% in tech sector positions and a rise in tech sector wages.

Access the Cyberstates 2017 interactive version with this link, or right below.