Well-paid tech jobs are concentrating

Via US News, an interesting set of data from Indeed: 

Through the first half of 2017, more than a quarter of America's job openings in tech were located in just eight major metropolitan areas, according to new research that also suggests the bulk of the industry's highest-paying jobs are consolidating around just a handful of cities across the country. 

Jed Kolko, chief economist at employment hub Indeed, on Tuesday unveiled new research digging into tech employment in America. It showed just eight metro areas – those centered around San Jose, California; the District of Columbia; Baltimore; Seattle; Raleigh, North Carolina; San Francisco; Austin, Texas; and Boston – accounted for 27 percent of all tech job postings during the first half of the year. 

Comparatively, that same group accounted for just 13 percent of all job postings across the country. Yet in some sense, Kolko indicated, that tech-heavy concentration is unsurprising, given the same cities accounted for 26.5 percent of tech job openings back in 2013.

The Wall Street Journal's headline was even more to the point: "The Best $100,000+ Tech Jobs Are Increasingly Concentrated in Just 8 Cities."

(How did Baltimore rate? Spillover from D.C.?)

I think what Kolko has to say in his original blog post rings remarkably true:

Higher-salary technology occupations are becoming increasingly concentrated, while lower-salary technology jobs are dispersing slightly to the rest of the country. In this sense, the US technology jobs landscape is becoming more unequal—yet another example of how the country is becoming increasingly differentiated and polarized. 

 I have zero doubt the same trends are true of chemistry.