New Jersey Holding On to Its Tech Jobs, Highly Paid Workforce, Report Says
New Jersey’s tech industry ranks 10th in the nation, with its companies employing 204,400 workers in 2014, according to numbers released by the Computing Industry Technology Association (CompTIA).
The findings were reported in a study called “Cyberstates 2015: The Definitive State-by-State Analysis of the U.S. Tech Industry.”
In 2014, New Jersey tech workers earned an average annual salary of $111,600, the fourth-highest for tech workers across the country, and 90 percent more than the average private-sector salary in the state.
Tech workers accounted for 6.3 percent of New Jersey’s private-sector workforce in 2014, the 11th highest concentration of tech workers in the country.
The 2013 edition of the study, which looked at the numbers for 2012, found that New Jersey tech employees earned an average annual income of $105,400 — the fourth highest for tech workers in the nation. This represented 85 percent more than the average private-sector income of $57,100 in New Jersey, according to the report. There were a reported 195,000 tech jobs in the Garden State in 2012, so New Jersey appears to have had a net gain in jobs from 2012 to 2014.
Tech companies appear to be attracted to New Jersey because of the “many world-class universities and the well-educated workforce,” a CompTIA spokesman said.
Looking at job postings, the 2015 report said that there were more than 30,500 openings for technology occupations in Q4 2014.
Here are some other facts in Cyberstates 2015:
- Only 600 net jobs in tech were lost in New Jersey between 2013 and 2014
- The 2014 tech payroll totaled $22.8 billion in New Jersey, ranking eighth nationwide and accounting for 12 percent of the entire private-sector payroll in the state.
- The tech industry accounts for 7.9 percent of the state economy.
- New Jersey ranks seventh in the country for employment in telecommunications services, with 30,700 jobs.
- The Garden State ranks eighth in the country for employment in computer systems design, with 71,500 jobs.
- New Jersey is also eighth in the country for employment in computer wholesale, with 7,500 jobs.
The U.S. tech industry employed 6.5 million tech workers nationally in 2014, adding a net 129,600 jobs, and growing at an annual rate of 2 percent. Tech accounts for 5.7 percent of the country’s entire private-sector workforce, and for 7.1 percent of the U.S. GDP. Overall, the average U.S. tech wage was $100,400 in 2014, compared with $49,600 for the U.S. private sector as a whole.
The Cyberstates 2015 report relied on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The report provides national and state-by-state data on tech employment, wages, establishments, payroll, wage differentials and employment concentration.
The NJTechWeekly.com article on the 2013 study can be found here.
###
