Boston tech talent is thriving, which is good news for one of the fastest growing tech hubs in the country.
A new report from CBRE ranks Boston as the seventh-best market for tech talent in North America. The report comes just a few months after Indeed named Boston the third-fastest growing tech hub in the country.
Driving Boston’s ranking as a top tech hub is an influx of tech graduates and one of the highest concentrations of workers in their 20s, an indicator of talent and future growth. Boston also has plenty of opportunities for those tech workers, with 160,070 tech jobs in 2018.
Silicon Valley leads the rankings, with Seattle and Toronto rounding out the top three markets.
CBRE’s 2019 Tech Talent report ranks 50 cities in the U.S. and Canada on both the quality and quantity that the labor pool provided to potential employers. To do so, CBRE scored each market on population trends as well as increased rates of 20-to-29-year-olds, housing costs, educational attainment, office rent and vacancy trends, diversity and its start-up pipeline.
Overall, the report found that both countries churned out more than six million highly skilled tech workers combined. The U.S. alone has more than 5.2 million tech workers and has added more than 693,000 jobs in the past five years.
Despite that growth, the outpouring of tech workers lags behind market demand, slowing down job creation, according to the report. With unemployment at 1.9 percent, it has created growing labor costs and increased competition to attract and retain talent, the report said.
Still, an influx of tech graduates and a youthful base of workers makes Boston a fertile region for tech companies looking to grow.