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Comparing Canadian, U.S. tech jobs – Metro US

Comparing Canadian, U.S. tech jobs

The largest of the tech trade associations in the U.S., the AEA, has released its annual review of the sector and in 2007, for the third year in a row, the American tech industry added nearly 100,000 jobs, for a total of 5.9 million workers.

However, that’s a drop of about 30 per cent in job creation, compared to 2006.

Figures for Canada in 2006 show nearly 600,000 people employed in ICT and we likely added about 20,000 in 2007.

Drilling down into the numbers, you’ll find that California has the largest total number of tech workers for any state, with over 900,000. Given the presence of Silicon Valley, that’s not surprising. The average yearly wage for a tech worker in California was $101,000 (All figures in U.S. dollars).

Just under 50 per cent of all venture capital money in America was plowed into California. That works out to $13.8 billion dollars. On CTV’s program Tech Now, I regularly interview a technology reporter from KNTV in San Jose, Calif. In our last chat he said venture capital investment has slowed way down, the talk of recession has had an impact and it’s expected there will be a chill on cash that will last six to 12 months.

Like Ottawa, Washington D.C. is a capital city, but it is also a hi-tech city. When I was there a couple of years ago for a series of stories, key industry people said one of their biggest problems is convincing people that the Washington area is more than politics. In fact, the latest AEA report says that the DC, Maryland and Virginia regions — which make up the U.S. capital — have the highest concentration of tech workers in all of America. The annual review also notes that unemployment in most tech sectors remains about two per cent, the competition for workers is strong and wages in tech average 87 per cent higher than the average wage for all private-sector industry.

And where was the growth in the U.S. tech sector? Just like in Canada software, engineering and tech services were expanding, while telecom and manufacturing were net job losers.

Website of the week:

www.fotoflexer.com. If you like modifying and improving your photos, this site allows you to do a lot of photo effects and then save the photo. It was started by a group of grad students and alumni from the University of California at Berkley.

• This Sunday one of the stories on Tech Now will be a look at teens, texting and driving. Don’t forget to check our website www.ctvottawa.ca.