New York Surpasses San Francisco as Top Tech Talent Market

New York has surpassed the San Francisco Bay Area as the largest tech talent market in the United States for the first time in 13 years, according to a new report from real estate services firm CBRE. The shift, detailed in CBRE's Scoring Tech Talent 2026 report, is attributed to a combination of tech sector layoffs in California and aggressive hiring by New York's finance industry, particularly for artificial intelligence roles.

The report, published on August 21, 2026, shows the New York metro area employed 394,300 tech talent workers in 2025, compared to 375,730 in the San Francisco Bay Area. This marks a reversal from 2022, when the Bay Area held a significant lead. The change is driven by divergent trends: New York added 30,640 tech jobs between 2022 and 2025, while the Bay Area lost 23,900 positions over the same period.

Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE's Tech Insights Center, explained that the Bay Area's tech industry has contracted due to layoffs, while New York's finance sector has been a major source of new tech hiring. "The finance sector has hired a lot of tech talent and a lot of AI workers," Yasukochi said, noting that data scientist roles, which grew...