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Texas Tech Hotbed Competes with Silicon Valley, Others in Workforce Report

According to a recent report, the Dallas-Fort Worth area has one of the largest concentrations of tech talent in the U.S.

(TNS) — Dallas-Fort Worth has one of the largest concentrations of tech workers in the country.

But smaller markets including Provo, Utah and Austin are seeing more growth in the sector, according to a new report by Cushman & Wakefield.

The D-FW area ranked seventh nationally among the markets with the most tech workers at the end of 2017, the commercial property firm found.

With an estimated 194,790 tech workers, North Texas has more people working in the sector than Seattle or Silicon Valley.

But the workforce is growing faster in cities including Provo, San Francisco and Austin where tech workers already account for a larger share of total employment.

About 6 percent of total North Texas employment is in tech industries, Cushman & Wakefield found. Nationwide, 4.8 percent of workers are in tech jobs.

"Although we expect established markets like Silicon Valley to see continued investment, new tech hubs are emerging across North America, from Provo to Philadelphia, sustaining a period of tech-driven, economic growth unseen since the dot-com boom of the late 1990s," Ken McCarthy, Cushman & Wakefield's principal economist, said in the report.

Since the beginning of 2017, Cushman & Wakefield estimates that tech companies have accounted for more than 40 percent of the square footage of the top 100 commercial building leases in North America.

"The strongest job growth has, in many cases, occurred in the cities where tech is critical," researchers with the firm found.

©2018 The Dallas Morning News Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.