Silicon Valley may be the epicenter of the tech industry, but Austin is a more attractive location for workers eager to increase their earning power.
Tech employees in Texas's capital received the largest average salary increases in the U.S. between 2016 and 2017, according to a new report by the job search marketplace Hired. The data showed that tech workers in the city made an average of $118,000 annually in 2017, a 7 percent jump from the year before. Workers in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., were close behind with a 6 percent salary increase in the same time span, Hired found.
"A couple of things are happening in Austin: a low cost of living, no income tax, and you already had a tech ecosystem there," Hired CEO Mehul Patel told Recode. He added that these factors have encouraged companies like Google, Facebook, and Dropbox to invest more in the area and increase average pay for employees.
Bay Area companies still pay the highest wages--Hired found the average annual tech salary there was $142,000--but they lag behind when adjusted for cost of living. That's why many workers are looking to cities where their dollars go further.
Hired looked at pay information in 10 U.S. and 3 international hubs and analyzed data from 69,000 people on its platform who searched for positions as software engineers, product managers, data analysts, and designers.