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The Fastest-Growing Tech State Is... Minnesota 155

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-you-know dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes: What's the fastest-growing state for technology jobs? You might be tempted to say California or New York, or even North Carolina. But according to new data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, it's actually Minnesota, which saw the size of its tech workforce jump 8.36 percent over the past six months, to 37,600 workers. Utah and Nebraska came in second and third on the list of fastest-growing states, with six-month tech-employment gains of 5.75 percent and 5.22 percent, respectively. Michigan and Florida came in fourth and fifth. States with smallish tech-worker populations can enjoy heady growth rates by adding relatively few workers. But not all states saw their tech workforce grow in the first half of 2015. Four states—Pennsylvania, Washington, North Carolina, and Alabama—actually saw their workforce decline by 0.61 percent, 0.63 percent, 2.36 percent, and 3.52 percent, respectively, during the period in question. The declines in Washington and North Carolina may come as a surprise to anyone following those states' tech industries, which are quite robust. In Washington's case, layoffs at Microsoft and other firms over the past few months may have contributed to the slight decline.
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The Fastest-Growing Tech State Is... Minnesota More

The Fastest-Growing Tech State Is... Minnesota

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  • Echo chamber? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mr_mischief ( 456295 ) on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @01:11PM (#50302781) Journal

    So Dice is posting about a Dice story that references government reports, but provides links only to Dice job searches. Why would it be so damaging to link to the actual data?

    • It's Nerval's Lobster, pretty much all of whose posts link to Dice.

      Which means either someone's really excited about Dice, or is on the damned payroll.

      And I know which I'm betting on.

  • There they go, creating tech jobs and all that. Terrible people, they are.

  • Law of large numbers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Wednesday August 12, 2015 @01:13PM (#50302811)

    Whether something is the fastest growing has a lot to do with where it started. It's a lot easier to double a small number than it is to double a big one. I wouldn't expect traditional tech hubs like California or Massachusetts to grow fast because they are already large. It's not even a little surprising that some place not normally considered a hotspot for tech jobs would grow the fastest.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aitikin ( 909209 )
      Came to point this out. Especially when that place is having fast growth in virtually every job sector like Minnesota (although the growth in this sector outweighs their average).

    • As has been pointed out, it's yet another story linking back to dice.

      Which means we already know not to expect quality writing.

      It's click-whoring, just like every other time Dice is linked to from Slashdot.

    • Whether something is the fastest growing has a lot to do with where it started. It's a lot easier to double a small number than it is to double a big one.

      True, but in the case of Utah, it's already pretty large. 20 years ago, in the hey day of Novell and Word Perfect, Utah was actually #2 behind California in software revenue (total, not per capita), and while it declined quite a bit as those companies died, it never went away. Their failure created lots of tech startups because, frankly, after living in Utah not many people want to move to California, while the flow the other direction is pretty large, and because the CS programs of the University of Utah a

    • Whether something is the fastest growing has a lot to do with where it started.

      Another genius. Minnesota has traditionally had among the highest employment-population ratios in the country from before these latest statistics.

      http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/20... [bls.gov]

      • Another genius. Minnesota has traditionally had among the highest employment-population ratios in the country from before these latest statistics.

        Nice insult. Would be better if your understanding of math improved. Has nothing to do with their employment ratios and everything to do with basic math. If the workforce in State A is 1000 tech workers and you add 8% you now have 1080 workers. If your workforce in State B is 10,000 tech workers and you add 5% you now have 10,500 workers. So State A is "faster growing" percent-wise even though State B actually added almost 7X as many jobs. When you get to big numbers you can add a huge number of jobs

        • Would be better if your understanding of math improved. Has nothing to do with their employment ratios and everything to do with basic math.

          Minnesota has the 11th largest number of tech workers of all US states.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Exactly. Given that a jump of 8.36% yields a statewide figure of 37,600, that means that Minnesota added about 2,900 jobs last year. That's not nothing, but in absolute terms it's not that much. California added 32,800 tech jobs last year; Texas 20,100; Florida 12,500; Massachusetts 8,700; and Michigan 8,100.

    • Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by alzoron ( 210577 )

      My religion i just created has shown unprecedented growth over the past few minutes. It's showing [ERROR: DIVIDE BY ZERO]% growth and shows no signs of slowing down.

  • Don't forget you can get very good fiber access in a large part of Minneapolis http://fiber.usinternet.com/ [usinternet.com]

    Would you like reasonably priced 10Gbps? No problemo! Ping times below 4ms? Done! yay!

    • don't move to marcy holmes neighborhood- 12mb tops here.
      • USI is expanding aggressively. I wouldn't be surprised if they've crossed the river in a year or two.

      • They only have fiber in southwest Minneapolis. Everywhere else is USI wireless which is contracted through the city.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by swb ( 14022 )

          And only parts of Southwest Minneapolis. My neighborhood doesn't have it, but I think part of that may be cursed geography. We were the LAST neighborhood to get DSL in the city.

          However, CenturyStink is going to be offering it soon. They had utility subcontractors stringing fiber along the poles in our neighborhood a few months ago.

          My hope is that it will prod USI to get our neighborhood covered as well, and that CL will sell internet access only, and not require phone service, TV, and other valu-add bull

      • We're next to Marcy-Holmes, and just got 40 MBit fiber. We can get faster, but I'm reluctant to pay for it until I find we have a use for it. (I'm perfectly willing to let a Linux distro go all night.)

  • When you start with a small denominator, small changes in the numerator show as large proportions or high growth rates. This is why politicians like to point to trough-to-peak numbers when talking about their own records and peak-to-trough when talking about their political opponents. It's why some little rinky-dink county in New Mexico has the highest recorded per-capita death rate from traffic accidents—there was one fatal car crash there at a time when the county population was half a dozen peopl

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by unimacs ( 597299 )
      Actually there's always been a fair number of tech jobs here, - going back to Control Data and Cray Research. Seagate has a major presence here. There's long history of medical device development/manufacturing and 3M has its tentacles everywhere.

      If you went to the CES keynote this past winter you will have heard of "SmartThings", a major player in the IOT/smart home market. They came out of a very active "Maker" community.

    • When you start with a small denominator

      Minnesota has had among the highest employment-population ratios in the country since 1976. So no, they did not start with a "small denominator". You could have learned that easily enough.

      http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/20... [bls.gov]

      • The number of tech employees there is small compared to Silicon Valley, Research Triangle, or the Northeast Corridor. Each additional employee in Minn. is therefore a larger proportional addition.

        • Each additional employee in Minn. is therefore a larger proportional addition.

          Way to double down on the stupid:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          An active high-technology sector is represented today by Alliant Techsystems, Ceridian, Cray, Digi International, Digital River, Geek Squad, Hutchinson Technology, Imation, IBM Rochester, Lawson Software, Medtronic, St. Jude Medical, Stratasys, SPS Commerce, 3M, and more than 400 smaller software companies.

          • With total tech employment slightly larger than tech job _growth_ in CA.

            Way to go all in on stupid.

            • With total tech employment slightly larger than tech job _growth_ in CA.

              What does that mean in regard to total population?

              Minnesota is in the top 12 states for total tech jobs.

              So, once again, stupid: The denominator is not low.

  • Maybe they should rank by number of jobs instead of % growth. When you go from 0 to something, the % is far greater than something big to something bigger...
  • Yeah! When you start out really close to zero it is easy to get a big percent growth. If there are 1000 jobs in a state and 100 new jobs are added, that is 10% growth. If you only started out at 10 jobs and had 100 new jobs created, that is 1000% growth. Look how well we are doing.

    • Yeah! When you start out really close to zero it is easy to get a big percent growth.

      Why, you stupid sonofabitch. Are you really so lazy that you couldn't spend ten seconds to learn that Minnesota has been among the states with the highest employment-population ratios for years before these latest statistics before making an ass of yourself? Don't you have any self-respect?

      http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/20... [bls.gov]

      And by the way, the states with the lowest employment-population ratios are (take a guess) West Vi

      • Wow, you are going to call me stupid. You really make yourself look like a complete moron then! You did see that it is tech growth, not all employment, right. Oh, perhaps that is too complicated of a sentence for someone as brain-dead as yourself.

        And really, I was simply referring to the fact that having a large growth is a misleading measurement since starting out small makes it much easier to have a large growth. To double 1 person takes only 1 person. To double a million will take another million. But th

        • Wow, you are going to call me stupid. You really make yourself look like a complete moron then! You did see that it is tech growth, not all employment, right. Oh, perhaps that is too complicated of a sentence for someone as brain-dead as yourself.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          The University of Minnesota trained many computer specialists who decided to stay in the Minnesota rather than move to sunny California. Minnesota thus preceded the better-known industrial districts of Route 128 around Boston and S

          • What is your point? Many simply means more than a few. What? Like 5 or 10? That is not very informative.

            • What is your point? Many simply means more than a few. What? Like 5 or 10? That is not very informative.

              Minnesota is #11 (out of 50) for total tech jobs.

              So, the denominator is not so small.

  • Target is headquartered in Minneapolis. I suspicion they hired more than a few IT folk to help mop-up the blood.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • My home town changed its tech worker count by a whooping 800%!

    Yeah, they had one IT guy in the administration of the mayor and with the new startup that employs 8 programmers...

    In other words, percentages are meaningless if you don't also tell us the total number. Of course the fastest growing tech state simply CANNOT be California. Because you'd have to hire a few thousands if not tens of thousands of tech people to even change it by a single digit percentage. It's far easier to come up with insane looking

    • 8% is nothing, but it holds more weight than "[...] It's far easier to come up with insane looking percentages if the starting point is somewhere near zero" as a counter argument without a single citation for the assumption upon which your argument against lacking numbers appears to hinge. That being said, both are technically true statements that actually express nearly nothing. I wasn't going to respond, but I'm a little bit disappointed as I usually enjoy (and agree with, to varying degrees) your posts

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