Dive Brief:
- San Francisco saw the biggest year-over-year salary increase for tech workers, with a gain of 3.28%, according to Hired's global look at tech salaries, which included salary information from 16 of the world’s biggest tech markets this year.
- Seattle wasn’t far behind, with tech salaries growing 2.14% there, followed by Austin and Chicago at .96% and .57%, respectively.
- A few cities, including Los Angeles, Denver, Washington and San Diego, actually saw salary declines, ranging from -.13% in L.A. to -4.92% in San Diego. It’s unclear why those cities saw declines.
Dive Insight:
It’s good news for tech workers that thought they had to move to the City by the Bay to make a good living. Hired said after adjusting for San Francisco’s astronomical cost of living, cities like Seattle and Austin are more cost effective, even with slightly lower salaries for tech workers.
For example, the average salary for a software engineer in Austin is $110,000 per year. That is equivalent to making $198,000 per year in San Francisco because of the astronomical differences between cost of living in the two cities.
Based on data from three different recent studies, Seattle is a hard place to beat if you’re a tech worker. A report released in August from Indeed found Seattle is also the best city for software engineers, data analysts and quality analysts to earn a living, while another study released last month found Seattle ranks number one when it comes to the number of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) workers in the U.S.
