Raleigh-Durham Ranked #19 In CBRE’s Annual ‘Scoring Tech Talent’ Report

Raleigh, NC – July 18, 2022 – Raleigh-Durham ranks #19 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.

“The state of North Carolina was recently named the No. 1 state in the U.S. for business by CNBC. Raleigh-Durham is our state’s leading market for the tech industry and tech-oriented educational institutions, both being major economic drivers for success. The market’s relatively low cost of doing business and living and high-quality talent pool are key contributors drawing in these tech companies. As firms more fully return to their offices, we anticipate increased office space demand from existing as well as new to our market tech employers,” said Executive Vice President Jason High.

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.

• Raleigh-Durham is one of the three most concentrated U.S. markets for software engineers employed in the tech industry (72 percent).
• Raleigh-Durham’s tech talent workforce of 69,050 grew by 10.8 percent from 2016 to 2021.
• It has the fourth highest ratio (47.4 percent) of residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher. The U.S. average is 32.9 percent.
• Raleigh-Durham’s population of millennials (aged 25 to 39) increased by 13.3 percent from 2015 to 2020, the ninth-largest gain among large markets in that span. Meanwhile, the metro’s working age Gen Z population (aged 20 to 24) increased by 7.1 percent, the fifth largest gain.
• Raleigh-Durham has relatively affordable real estate costs for a leading tech hub. Its average annual office asking rent is 19th most expensive at $30.58 per sq. ft. per year, its average monthly apartment rent is 25th most expensive at $1,429 and its ratio of tech salary to apartment rent is 17 percent. That’s the 18th most affordable ratio among the top 50 markets.

Top 10 Tech Talent Markets

To download the full report, click here.

CBRE|Raleigh is a CBRE office serving the Triangle region and is a joint venture between local principals and CBRE Group, Inc. The firm assists real estate owners, investors and occupiers by offering strategic advice and execution for property leasing and sales; property, facilities and project management; corporate services; debt and equity financing; investment management; valuation and appraisal; research and investment strategy; and consulting. In 2021, the Raleigh office completed $3.3 billion of sales and leasing transactions. Please visit our website at www.cbre.us/raleigh.