Columbus Ranks #31 In CBRE’s Annual ‘Scoring Tech Talent’ Report

Columbus ranks #31 overall in CBRE’s 2022 Scoring Tech Talent report as North American tech-talent employment bounced back from the pandemic to post job gains across most top markets in 2021, though the industry’s resilience will be tested again amid economic turmoil in 2022, according to a new report from CBRE.

The U.S. added a net 136,000 tech talent jobs last year across established hubs such as the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and Seattle as well as smaller markets like Nashville, Cleveland and California’s Inland Empire. Both tech job growth and tech office leasing proved resilient by rebounding in 2021 from slowdowns in 2020.

Columbus has the 25th largest tech talent labor pool in North America, with 50,390 workers representing 4.4 percent of the total employment in 2021. Between 2016 and 2021, Columbus’s tech workforce grew 4 percent, adding 1,770 employees.

“Tech talent is not only taking the lead in our city’s growing labor pool, but also driving creative solutions in office space occupancy,” said Paul Tingley with CBRE’s office sector in Columbus. “Gone are the days when low-cost and space efficiency drove office decisions. With Columbus as the eighth-most concentrated millennial market, tech firms are looking for work-play environments that provide a sense of community along with entertainment hubs and a residential anchor to energize their return-to-work office momentum.”

CBRE’s report, now in its 10th year, ranks the top 50 North American markets by analyzing 13 measures of their ability to attract and develop tech talent, including tech graduation rates, tech-job concentration, tech labor pool size, and labor and real estate costs.

CBRE also ranks the Next 25 emerging tech markets on a narrower set of criteria. Tech talent is defined as 20 key tech professions -- such as software engineers and systems and data managers – across all industries.

Columbus stood out in the report in several other key areas:

• Columbus is the eighth-most concentrated millennial market, with 22.8 percent of its population in that cohort. The metro’s millennial population grew by 11.3 percent from 2015 to 2020, the 11th-largest gain among large markets in that span.
• Office rents in Columbus are the ninth lowest in North America. The average one-year cost for operating a 500-employee tech company occupying a 75,000 sq. ft. in Columbus amounts to $42.8 million, making it the 22nd most affordable for annual operating costs among the 50 markets ranked.
• Columbus’s rent-to-tech wage ratio of 14.7 percent is the fourth lowest and falls below the affordability standard of 30 percent of income to housing.
• Columbus has a high concentration (24 percent) of tech talent in non-tech industries, including finance, insurance and real estate.

To download the full report, click here.