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The Fastest-Growing Tech State Is... Minnesota
Nerval's Lobster writes: What's the fastest-growing state for technology jobs? You might be tempted to say California or New York, or even North Carolina. But according to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it's actually Minnesota, which saw the size of its tech workforce jump 8.36 percent over the past six months, to 37,600 workers. Utah and Nebraska came in second and third on the list of fastest-growing states, with six-month tech-employment gains of 5.75 percent and 5.22 percent, respectively. Michigan and Florida came in fourth and fifth. States with smallish tech-worker populations can enjoy heady growth rates by adding relatively few workers. But not all states saw their tech workforce grow in the first half of 2015. Four states—Pennsylvania, Washington, North Carolina, and Alabama—actually saw their workforce decline by 0.61 percent, 0.63 percent, 2.36 percent, and 3.52 percent, respectively, during the period in question. The declines in Washington and North Carolina may come as a surprise to anyone following those states' tech industries, which are quite robust. In Washington's case, layoffs at Microsoft and other firms over the past few months may have contributed to the slight decline.
It's hard to retain people when mobs lasso your workers, drag them a mile down the road, and hang them.
Fact!
So Dice is posting about a Dice story that references government reports, but provides links only to Dice job searches. Why would it be so damaging to link to the actual data?
There they go, creating tech jobs and all that. Terrible people, they are.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Whether something is the fastest growing has a lot to do with where it started. It's a lot easier to double a small number than it is to double a big one. I wouldn't expect traditional tech hubs like California or Massachusetts to grow fast because they are already large. It's not even a little surprising that some place not normally considered a hotspot for tech jobs would grow the fastest.
In NC's case, the decline in Tech. workers is probably due to the draconian policies of the Republican controlled government. They are killing education, even our vaunted state university system, killing off services as fast as they can go, fighting the EPA over water and air quality to allow more pollution, and trying to ram fracking down the throats of an unwilling population that already has insufficient clean water resources.
They say they are making the state "more business friendly" but the numbers tell a different story. What self respecting tech company would want to relocate here? Or grow here? Who would subject their employees to this? And in particular, what self respecting tech workers would want to subject their kids to this dying education system?
North Carolina is in a race for the bottom. Sad but true.
Don't forget you can get very good fiber access in a large part of Minneapolis http://fiber.usinternet.com/
Would you like reasonably priced 10Gbps? No problemo! Ping times below 4ms? Done! yay!
--hongpong.com
When you start with a small denominator, small changes in the numerator show as large proportions or high growth rates. This is why politicians like to point to trough-to-peak numbers when talking about their own records and peak-to-trough when talking about their political opponents. It's why some little rinky-dink county in New Mexico has the highest recorded per-capita death rate from traffic accidents—there was one fatal car crash there at a time when the county population was half a dozen people. It's why a high-school science project reported a 66.7% mortality rate when supplements were added to frog's diets—only one of the frogs lived.
Flyover states have cheap energy, because it's the only way they can attract businesses. There's only one problem... nobody wants to live there.
Maybe they should rank by number of jobs instead of % growth. When you go from 0 to something, the % is far greater than something big to something bigger...
Karma: Bad
Yeah! When you start out really close to zero it is easy to get a big percent growth. If there are 1000 jobs in a state and 100 new jobs are added, that is 10% growth. If you only started out at 10 jobs and had 100 new jobs created, that is 1000% growth. Look how well we are doing.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I am a software team manager for a Fortune 500 medical device company in the TC's. The market is tight. My company is sending out strong offers to qualified applicants. The lower end of the market is particularly tight. Good news for those few millennials who know a little discrete math and how to program. There is a lot of innovation in cardiac, patient monitoring, renal, etc. If the liberals would rescind Obama's medical device tax we'd be going great guns. Come to Minne. Silicon Valley, Boston, and Austen are already ruined.
Tech has been humming along in MN for a while. Apparently not based on absolute size. I'm going off what I know about the job market and what types of companies are in the MSP metro area. Minneapolis has quite a bit. There's also a decent tech cluster in the Bloomington, Edina, and Eden Prairie cluster of cities in the suburbs.
Target is headquartered in Minneapolis. I suspicion they hired more than a few IT folk to help mop-up the blood.
The market has been 'on-fire- (in a good way)' for the past decade here.
As a consultant I am easily 125% booked and pull in 200k+ with semi-decent skills...
Gowing from Zero to One is infinite growth ;)
Why, you stupid sonofabitch. Are you really so lazy that you couldn't spend ten seconds to learn that Minnesota has been among the states with the highest employment-population ratios for years before these latest statistics before making an ass of yourself? Don't you have any self-respect?
http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/20...
And by the way, the states with the lowest employment-population ratios are (take a guess) West Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi and New Mexico.
You are welcome on my lawn.
While Cmdr Taco was there, all stories had links, that could be followed and verified. This article is the work of a corporate shill - Slashdot, if you want to pitch dice of some other company, have the honesty to put this story in your 'advertisement' boxes, and not as a news story.
Wow, you are going to call me stupid. You really make yourself look like a complete moron then! You did see that it is tech growth, not all employment, right. Oh, perhaps that is too complicated of a sentence for someone as brain-dead as yourself.
And really, I was simply referring to the fact that having a large growth is a misleading measurement since starting out small makes it much easier to have a large growth. To double 1 person takes only 1 person. To double a million will take another million. But then, doubling your stupidity would take more energy than exists in the known universe, so that is pretty interesting!
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Slashdot, how far you have fallen. On the heels of SourceForge, this story is a perfect example why more of us are seeking elsewhere for our tech news. Have the decency, if you have been paid by Dice for this post, to actually label it as such. A search for this report in the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals nothing that can be spun as in your story:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm
PLEASE have some integrity, and source/reference your stories.
Ah! Slashdot, a place filled with individuals having infinite intellect, understanding and wisdom ;)
FYI
Went to work for Control Data (Minnesota wafer fab) in 1981 after getting out of the USAF
One must also wonder who added the (Score:2) ;) lol
Just saying ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
What is your point? Many simply means more than a few. What? Like 5 or 10? That is not very informative.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Minnesota is #11 (out of 50) for total tech jobs.
So, the denominator is not so small.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...when you have 3 people and it grows to 30 you have 1000% growth.
That's different
My home town changed its tech worker count by a whooping 800%!
Yeah, they had one IT guy in the administration of the mayor and with the new startup that employs 8 programmers...
In other words, percentages are meaningless if you don't also tell us the total number. Of course the fastest growing tech state simply CANNOT be California. Because you'd have to hire a few thousands if not tens of thousands of tech people to even change it by a single digit percentage. It's far easier to come up with insane looking percentages if the starting point is somewhere near zero.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We at Vatican are a country with fastest growing tech sector in the world. Last year we increased number of positions by 300% by teaching fathers John, Paul and Lucas to write web pages.
Another genius. Minnesota has traditionally had among the highest employment-population ratios in the country from before these latest statistics.
Nice insult. Would be better if your understanding of math improved. Has nothing to do with their employment ratios and everything to do with basic math. If the workforce in State A is 1000 tech workers and you add 8% you now have 1080 workers. If your workforce in State B is 10,000 tech workers and you add 5% you now have 10,500 workers. So State A is "faster growing" percent-wise even though State B actually added almost 7X as many jobs. When you get to big numbers you can add a huge number of jobs without it looking impressive statistically.
Any time you hear someone say something is "fastest growing" it almost always doesn't mean much if they didn't start with a big number. For example Apple has revenue of $182B for the last 12 months. EBay has revenue over the same period of around $17B. Red Hat has revenue around $1.8B. For Apple to grow by 10% next year they will have to create a new business the size of eBay in ONE year. For eBay to grow by 10% they have to create a company the size of Red Hat out of thin air. With no disrespect to Red Hat, it is a lot easier to create a company Red Hat's size than one eBay's size. Apple could literally grow 1/10th as fast and still match eBay's revenue growth just because of their size. So who is really growing faster? The small guy with the big percentage or the big guy with the bigger absolute number?
Minnesota has some great companies headquartered there but relatively few of them are tech companies. They are like eBay in the above example while California is like Apple. MUCH harder to grow the bigger number by the same rate.
New Yorkers are just assholes. They complain about weather that's not even half as bad as ours. Sorry, next.
Well, you must know that New York City is the center of the universe and "The Greatest City in the World". Just ask any New Yorker and they'll be happy to tell you how wonderful New York City is and how crappy wherever you live is.
Though at least they aren't as big of weather weenies as the crowd in Southern California...
It is when compared to the other big tech states, asswipe.
Ooh, we have more tech jobs than Alabama!
Quick being such a prick, or go back to reddit...
Seconded - I work in R&D at a tech company in Minneapolis and our department has a lot of pull and nearly final say in many things since we write the core software the company uses to sell services.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
You understand that 11 out of 50 means way above fucking average, right?
Minnesota has more tech jobs than Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa and thirty-five other states.
Alabama is not a fair comparison.
You are welcome on my lawn.