| Virginia takes the national lead in creating high-tech
jobs
Virginia
Business
June 2006 Virginia has long been touted to be
one of the country’s best locations for high-tech
workers. State officials now have hard information to
back up that claim.
The Old Dominion leads the nation in
technology job creation. That was the conclusion of Cyberstates
2006, an annual
report by AeA, the nation’s largest trade association
for the high-tech industry. Virginia had a net gain
of 9,100 technology jobs in 2004, bringing the total
to
253,300 high-tech workers, fifth in the nation.
Virginia trails only Colorado in high-tech job concentration,
another growth measurement. The report found that 88.6
of every 1,000 private-sector employees in Virginia work
in a technology industry.
Gregory Poersch, executive director
of the AeA Potomac Council, says that Virginia’s numbers in the report
were impressive, not only for jobs, but also for gains
in wages, exports and venture capital investments. The
report found that the average high-tech job in Virginia
now pays an annual salary of $79,100, or 97 percent more
than the average private sector job. “If these
trends continue, next year Virginia will become the state
with the highest concentration of tech workers in the
nation,” Poersch says.
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