The San Francisco Bay Space, epicenter of the factitious intelligence growth, is residence to an enormous quantity of tech staff employed by among the world’s most precious firms, from Apple to Nvidia.
However for the primary time, New York has eclipsed the Bay Space as the house of the most important “tech expertise workforce,” a report by actual property and funding agency CBRE exhibits. The agency has revealed the annual report for 13 years.
Final yr, the New York Metro Space’s tech expertise workforce reached 394,300, surpassing the Bay Space’s 375,730, based on the report. Fueled by mass layoffs, the Bay Space’s tech expertise workforce dropped by 6% from 2022 to 2025. New York’s tech expertise workforce, however, grew by greater than 8% throughout that interval.
Tech expertise staff embody extremely expert staff in additional than 20 technology-oriented jobs, employed in industries akin to healthcare, monetary companies, authorities and extra, based on CBRE.
The expansion of New York’s tech expertise highlights how tech staff are spilling into different industries and cities as Silicon Valley firms lay off staff. Firms together with Meta, Block and Amazon proceed to chop staff as they focus extra on AI investments.
“The Bay Space is more likely to stay … the central location for the AI business and for innovation. However as we’ve seen throughout previous cycles, because it tends to develop, that spreads out to all the important thing markets,” Colin Yasukochi, govt director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Heart, stated throughout a information convention Tuesday.
New York has gained tech staff within the monetary companies sector, which was an early adopter of synthetic intelligence, stated Lauren Crowley Corrinet, vice chairman of CBRE’s Consulting Group in New York. In the meantime, AI startups have popped up within the Midtown South neighborhood and different areas.
New York has a transit-rich setting, making it a lovely place for firms to buy new workplace house and staff to dwell in.
“The scale of the market, simply the sheer scale of it, actually does assist each the early stage progress, but additionally that skill to simply scale quick,” she stated.
In California, some cities grew their tech expertise workforce. Sacramento’s tech expertise workforce grew greater than 8% from 2022 to 2025, reaching 42,970.
Los Angeles and Orange County’s tech workforce totaled 227,350 final yr, up by lower than 1% in comparison with 2022. Toronto, Washington, D.C. and Dallas-Forth Value all had extra tech expertise.
CBRE checked out different components past the scale of a metro space’s tech expertise workforce, akin to common wage, rental costs and tech graduates, to rank the markets on a scorecard. The Bay Space nonetheless is on the prime whereas New York is fourth. Los Angeles is ranked No. 18.
The drop in tech expertise within the Bay Space comes as staff develop extra nervous that AI may result in fewer jobs.
Roughly 71% of adults assume AI will result in fewer jobs in the USA over the following twenty years, up from 64% in 2024, based on a survey launched by the Pew Analysis Heart on Tuesday.
Whereas tech executives akin to Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have an optimistic outlook on the way forward for AI, they’ve additionally acknowledged that firm sizes may shrink. However AI additionally may create new jobs.
The U.S. high-tech business nonetheless is filling AI-related roles together with knowledge scientists and {hardware} engineers, based on CBRE. It stays to be seen whether or not hiring will outpace cuts, although CBRE executives additionally appeared optimistic.
“My expectation is that these jobs are going to proceed to develop as firms, not solely tech firms, begin to determine how they’re going to implement AI into their companies,” Yasukochi stated.