Texas joins ranks of top states for high-tech job growth

For the second month, Washington, DC led the nation’s metropolitan areas in new IT positions, according to an analysis of new software and IT job creation by state and metropolitan area for January 2005. The analysis of data compiled by Silicon Valley firm NimbleCatTM also shows that Dallas, Texas joined the ranks of the top ten metropolitan areas for high-tech job creation, and that Texas ranked second, behind California, for the number of new IT jobs last month, with almost 6.2% of new high-tech positions nationwide. Another southern state, Florida, gained a 5% share of IT job creation in January. The full report can be downloaded here.

California, though still the top state overall for IT job growth, continues to decline gradually in high-tech job creation. Although the Silicon Valley cities of San Jos and San Francisco, as well as the Southern California city of Long Beach, remained in the nationwide top ten metropolitan areas for IT job creation in January, the city of Oakland dropped from the top ten, and San Jos slid from third place in December to fifth place; the city had held the number-one spot in November.

The top ten metropolitan areas for IT and software job creation in January, in order of number of jobs created from highest to lowest, were Washington, DC; Long Beach, CA; Chicago, IL; Boston, MA; San Jos, CA; New York, NY; San Francisco, CA; Dallas, TX; Atlanta, GA; and Seattle, WA. Although the rankings of some of these metropolitan areas within the top ten have changed since November 2004, the only new city in the top ten metro areas is Dallas.

NimbleCat’s analysis of software job creation by category shows that software engineer, software manager and program manager continue to be the three leading job categories of new US software and IT jobs in January. NimbleCat’s monthly report is based on an analysis of software and IT jobs posted to major job boards. The firm analyses new US software and IT jobs every day to produce free daily job alerts for approximately 6000 subscribers.

NimbleCat founder and CEO Sunil Mehta, commenting on California’s continued decline in new IT jobs growth, said, While we saw a slight dip in new IT jobs in California in December, we couldn’t say with confidence that it was the start of a negative trend, especially with the usual slowdown in hiring over the holidays. However, the fact that new high-tech job creation here has continued to decline-albeit slowly-may be a concern. Still, it’s encouraging to see that IT job growth in other metropolitan areas and states greatly accelerated in January, especially in Texas and Florida.

NimbleCat, a privately held company in Fremont, California, was founded by a team of engineering and recruitment professionals to solve the problem of matching the right person with the right job. Having experienced how difficult and time-consuming it is to connect quality professionals with the jobs that they are best suited for, NimbleCat’s founders have created, the first job-routing network (JRN) to connect employers with the most qualified candidates, and highly qualified job seekers with the best jobs. The company’s service is free of charge to job seekers.