Portland Ranked #23 In CBRE’s Annual ‘Scoring Tech Talent’ Report

Portland ranks #23 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.

Portland saw significant growth across several key categories in this year’s report. Portland’s tech labor pool was tied for the ninth-largest gains, growing 28 percent to 67,410 from 2016 to 2021. Portland also ranked as one of the top job markets for tech-job creation, generating 14,760 new tech jobs compared to 11,146 tech graduates over the past five years.

“Portland’s tech talent workforce has continued to increase at a consistent rate, with gains of about 3,000 tech talent employees annually over the past five years,” said Ajay Malhotra, a CBRE First Vice President in Portland. “There are several factors that have contributed to this increase, including the addition of more tech jobs being created compared to the number of tech graduates, a rising and diverse millennial population and a low cost of living for tech talent employees compared to larger, more traditional markets.”

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.

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

• Portland’s population of millennials (aged 25 to 39) increased by 10.5 percent from 2015 to 2020, the 12th largest gain among large markets in that span. Portland also has the seventh-most concentrated market for millennials at 23.1 percent of its population.
• Portland has relatively affordable real estate costs for a leading tech hub. Its average annual office asking rent is 15th most expensive at $31.96 per sq. ft. per year, its average monthly apartment rent is 14th most expensive at $1,628 and its ratio of tech salary to apartment rent of 19.4 percent is 20th highest.
• Portland has the fourth-highest concentration of tech talent employment within the tech industry at 50.6 percent. It also has the fourth-highest concentration of software engineers employed within the tech industry at 68 percent of the market’s engineer workforce.

To download the full report, click here.