As every recruiter and hiring manager knows, the nation’s tech industry isn’t limited to the Bay Area and New York City. While Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley continue to attract their massive share of companies, tech pros, and funding, a handful of smaller states are seeing large year-over-year gains in new tech professionals. You can attribute a portion of these gains to simple math: many of these smaller states have a relatively tiny number of tech pros living within their borders, meaning that even incremental increases in headcount can translate into significant percentage gains. In large states such as California, by comparison, many thousands of tech workers would need to join the workforce in order to make any significant difference in the overall numbers. Over the past decade or so, many smaller states and cities have begun to aggressively cultivate startups and well-established tech firms, recognizing that growing tech hubs can translate into significant tax bases. This can also spike the growth rate. If you’re interested in seeing how the fastest-growing U.S. states match up against one another, take the quiz above, which is based on a recent Dice analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). You might be surprised at which one came in first place.
