South Florida Moves Up Four Spots to #33 In CBRE’s Annual ‘Scoring Tech Talent’ Report

South Florida ranks #33 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.

Measuring Tech Talent

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.

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.

Tech Talent in South Florida

South Florida is among the biggest gainers in this year’s report, rising four spots from last year’s ranking due in part to its tech talent growth, tech talent pipeline and apartment rent growth, among other factors. South Florida’s tech talent labor pool is the 25th largest among tech markets with 66,660 workers representing 2.6 percent of the region’s total employment in 2021. Between 2016 and 2021, South Florida’s tech workforce grew by 7.6 percent, adding 4,690 employees.

“Miami’s tech ecosystem has skyrocketed over the past 24 months due to the migration of tech leadership and talent, and increasing opportunities for funding,” said Grant Killingsworth, a Senior Vice President with CBRE in Miami. “As executives relocated to South Florida during the pandemic, tech and financial services companies have reconsidered their South Florida real estate needs, which has generated a requirement of over 1.5 million square feet of office space. This represents over 10 times our average new-to-market tenant growth. Additionally, several existing technology companies have increased their presence by 20 to 40 percent given the influx of new capital and talent in the market.”

South Florida stood out in the report in several other key areas:

• South Florida has the sixth-highest concentration of software engineers working in the tech industry, with 57 percent working for tech firms.
• South Florida was the fourth most diverse large tech market in the U.S. for underrepresented groups (Hispanic, Black and Other Non-White/Non-Asian people) in 2020; however, the tech industry is less diverse when compared with these groups in office-using industries in the region.
• South Florida produced 13,500 tech degree graduates between 2016 and 2020 and added 4,690 jobs. That means an ample supply of tech talent becomes available each year for workforce growth.
• Of South Florida’s 3,074 tech degree graduates in 2020, nationally underrepresented race/ethnic groups accounted for 70.9 percent, the highest percentage among the top 50 U.S. markets.
• South Florida is the 26th least expensive market for tech company operating expenses. The average one-year cost for operating a 500-employee tech company occupying 75,000 square feet in South Florida amounts to $43.3 million.

Biggest Gainers In Tech Talent Top 50