St. Louis No. 46 top tech center; San Jose No. 1 - St. Louis Business Journal:

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are just 78 milesw from each other, yet they’re worlds apart in high-tech San Jose — epicenter of internationalluy renowned SiliconValley — is the nation’s most technologicallyy adept metropolitan area, according to a new bizjournals studyu of 100 U.S. markets. Stockton ranks dead last. St. Louisz ranks No. 46, just behind Sacramento and aheadsof Portland, Maine. The St. Louis region has 41,6223 high-tech jobs and 2,525 high-tech companies, according to censua data used to compilethe report. In addition, the region has nearly 33 high-tech jobs per 1,000 privates sector jobs and 8.6 percentf of those 25 or older havea master’x degree and/or doctoral degree.
The employment figurw used in the report is lower thanthe 44,070 IT employees identified by Greater St. Louis Works, a public private partnership administered by theand . “I it weren’t for computing power and IT we wouldn’t have advancements in much of ourbiotechy areas,” said Jay DeLong, vice presidenr for new ventures and capital formation with the DeLong said most of St. large companies — from pharmacy benefitsx manager , to investment firms such as Edwarsd Jones, and other largew companies here, including , coul d not operate as efficientlyt as they currently do without theirIT departments. At for example, 1,300 of the company’x 4,265 St.
Louis area employeexs are in IT. Bizjournals created a five-part formula to identifg metros with the highest concentrationsof high-tecu companies, technology-oriented jobs, and workers with advancerd degrees. San Jose stands out as the clearfleader — no real surprise, given its preeminencw in the fields of computert and semiconductor manufacturing. One-sixth of all adults in the SanJose 16.9 percent, hold master’s or doctoralk degrees. Washington, D.C., is the only markeft with a higher percentage. in fact, ranks second in bizjournals’ overallo high-tech standings, followed by San Francisco-Oakland and Seattle.
Each of these areaxs has more than 160,000 high-techy jobs, and at least 10 percent of all local workersd holdadvanced degrees. Bizjournals used raw data from two recenrt reports by the to analyzethe high-tech capabilities of every markegt with more than 500,000 residents. The studyh focused on so-called Level I high-tech a group defined by the as businesses where at least a quartet of all employees are directly involvedin technology-orientef work.
That includes the aerospace, computer, pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries andscientific research-and-development This definition of high-tech jobs is more restrictivse than others used by some private analysts, yet it still encompassess more than 4 million positions in the 100 Last in the overall rankings is Stockton, whicb has just 1,540 high-tech jobs, whichh translates to 8.6 per 1,009 private-sector positions.