Interesting article from Dallas Business Journal today:
Amazon HQ2 search: Dallas blows Austin away on this metric
Shawn Shinneman
By Staff Writer, Dallas Business Journal
Oct 11, 2017, 1:24pm CDT
On par with the rest of the country, North Texans have heard the alarm horns sounding on the technology talent gap for a couple of years now. As more and more jobs continue to be automated, workforces in Dallas-Fort Worth and elsewhere will have to adjust.
But when it comes to landing Amazon’s second headquarters, the metrics associated with the talent gap could actually be on DFW’s side. DFW’s tech labor pool has grown by 33 percent in the last five years, and studies suggest that the region isn’t having trouble holding onto home-grown talent or attracting tech workers from out of town.
Dallas-Fort Worth is home to about 161,000 tech workers, including 49,000 software developers and programmers, according to CBRE’s 2017 Tech Talentreport.
A non-comprehensive list of HQ2 contenders might include Atlanta (122,810 tech workers), Austin (68,810), Boston (115,560), Denver (77,310), and Washington D.C. (243,360), in addition to DFW. Of those, only Washington D.C. boasts a larger tech workforce, but the nation’s capital is also the slowest growing hub on the list. It lost 2 percent of its software developers last year.
From a talent perspective, high-tech Austin appears an underdog. Even with a well-earned reputation as a tech hub, the state capital appears to lack the tech population to stand up a company of Amazon’s size. The everything-seller is as much a logistics company as anything, but it’s built on technology; HQ2 will be loaded with software developers and programmers.
Amazon will have to lean on transplants no matter where it settles, however, and most of DFW’s assumed competitors perform better when it comes to attracting millennials. From 2010 to 2015, Atlanta grew its millennial population by 9.3 percent, Denver by 7 percent, Washington D.C. by 5.9 percent and Austin by 5.5 percent. Dallas grew by 3.8 percent while Boston grew by 0.8 percent, according to CBRE.
Interestingly, Seattle, home to Amazon’s HQ1, grew its millennial population considerably faster than any other market with at least 50,000 tech workers. The Pacific Northwest hub grew by 16.6 percent among the population.
In fact, the region ranks second in the U.S. when it comes to technology “brain gain,” a measure of the number of overall workers added to the tech labor force minus the number of graduates added to the tech labor force. In other words, brain gain grasps how many tech workers a region gains beyond the ones it grows organically. With 40,310 tech jobs added over the last five years compared to 17,750 tech degrees, DFW’s brain gain of 22,560 is bested only by San Fransisco.
A look at LinkedIn’s September workforce report shows that Dallas is strong when it comes to providing the talent needed to fill the open jobs of the area, as well. Although the report doesn’t focus specifically on tech-related skills, LinkedIn’s research shows that Dallas has a skills gap of .42.
That number is a percentage based on how cities stack up to San Francisco — DFW’s gap is equal to 42 percent of San Fransisco’s. Washington D.C. at .76 and Austin at .61 rank second and third on LinkedIn's list behind San Fransisco.
In a world in which every research group under the son has produced talent-related metrics — some of them contradicting each other — its difficult to know exactly which ones Amazon will trust. However, the Metroplex stacks up well by several measures, and it’s hard to envision a scenario in which the availability of tech talent counts as a checkmark against Amazon joining North Texas’ business community.
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