15 Cities With the Most High-Tech Jobs

Of the 1.4 million workers in the Denver metropolitan area’s labor force, 9.2% are employed in the fields of science, math, engineering, and technology. Some of the area’s largest employers are telecommunication companies like Dish Networks and CenturyLink as well as some major health care companies like Denver Health and Kaiser Permanente. Denver area STEM workers are most likely to work as a mining or geological engineer.

The Trenton metropolitan area benefits greatly from its geographical location, near New York and Philadelphia, two of the nation’s major industrial centers. Land, rent, and taxes are significantly lower in Trenton than in New York City, for example, which helps lure regional business to the city. Trenton and the state of New Jersey have made additional financial efforts to draw tech companies to the area. For instance, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority in 2017 approved $17 million in tax credits to encourage technology consulting and data management systems company Maestro Technologies to relocate in Trenton.

Ann Arbor is home to the University of Michigan, one of the top U.S. colleges for engineering and other science programs. This major university provides Ann Arbor businesses with a steady supply of young, educated job seekers each year. Over 54% of adults in Ann Arbor have a college degree, well above the 32% college degree attainment rate nationwide.

The Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville metropolitan area has been home to NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center — known as “America’s gateway to space” — since 1962. Not surprisingly, the most common STEM job in the area is aerospace engineering and operations technicians. The area also has a rapidly growing technology industry. The City of Palm Bay organized an Economic Development and External Affairs Division in 2015 to aid promote further growth in the city’s tech industry.

California’s Bay Area, home to Oakland, San Francisco, and the surrounding area, is one of just 11 major metro areas in the United States in which at least one in 10 workers are employed in STEM fields. Just north of the San Jose area and Silicon Valley, the Bay Area is home to some of the largest and most recognizable tech companies in the world, including Twitter, Salesforce, and Uber. Yet the STEM field that employs the most Bay Area residents is actually biological science. This field includes scientific researchers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and diagnostic laboratory workers.