Philly’s tech workers seek city life, no longer as spread out across suburbs

Tech work volume can be measured in many ways. You can count companies, or job titles, or emerging industries, or other metrics.  

By nearly all, the Philly region’s tech economy has become more concentrated within city limits. 

Regionwide over the last five years, the number of tech jobs in Philadelphia has grown faster than population growth. That includes both local jobs at tech companies, totaling nearly 100,000, and tech jobs at any company (like a software developer at a cable provider or a bank) at 135,000.

That’s all while Philadelphia has had a surprisingly positive recent jobs boom. The region has added more jobs since the pandemic than fast-growing Nashville, according to one analysis, and over the last year has had faster growth than economic-winners Dallas, Atlanta and Austin. Look more closely inside the region, though, and you’ll find growth is not evenly distributed. 

In the end, across all definitions, tech jobs are highly productive and highly paid.

Knowing where the growth in this sector is happening can inform policy and programming — and it takes some work to get the real story. 

Three counties generate 60% of the region’s tech economy 

Start with the 11 counties that fulfill standard Philadelphia regional data. It includes the four Pennsylvania counties that ring the city, Delaware’s northernmost New Castle County and five South Jersey counties. 

Three-quarters of the region’s tech jobs are in less than half of those counties. The group is led by Philadelphia, Mongtomery and Chester, all in Pennsylvania. The others are Delaware’s New Castle County, which has big banking hubs in Wilmington, and New Jersey’s Mercer County, which holds Princeton and state capital Trenton. 

Burlington County in New Jersey outperforms for its size. The rest — Bucks and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania, and Camden, Gloucester and rural Salem counties in New Jersey — have far smaller tech industries and workforces.

To evaluate the region’s tech economy it’s best to pay attention to the area that hugs the Schuylkill River, which comes to Philadelphia after splitting Montgomery and Chester counties. These Pennsylvania counties — just 3 of 11 — generate nearly 60% of the region’s tech economy.

The biggest of the trio has long been Montgomery County, where business parks sprawl and tiny Conshohocken developed a mini skyline by offering respite to tax-avoidant Philadelphians.

In 2019, by one measure, Montco businesses employed twice as many tech workers as those in Philadelphia. Philadelphia was also long outpaced by Chester County, which then-President Ronald Reagan 40 years ago called “the workplace of the future.”

But, the balance has shifted in recent years, despite stories of people fleeing cities after the pandemic.

In 2023, Philadelphia held 15% of all regional tech jobs, according to a Technical.ly analysis. And across the big three counties, 1 in 4 (27%) were in the city proper. Both shares grew since 2019. 

Montgomery and Chester counties absolutely still matter for the region’s tech economy. Each still has more total tech jobs than Philadelphia by most counts, and higher concentrations of these tech jobs than the city. But each saw declines in their tech employment totals between 2019 and 2023. Philadelphia saw meaningful growth.

A decade ago, Technical.ly asked: “Can the city lead the region’s innovation future?” The next year, we started reporting that tech job growth was growing faster in Philadelphia, albeit from a lower base, than its suburban counterparts. 

The many definitions of ‘tech job’ all tell the story of city-led growth

All three main ways to count tech jobs tell the same story in the Philadelphia region. 

First, you can look at all the jobs at any tech company — which requires defining what counts as a “tech company.” The above analysis is based on grouping four of the most common industry categories in the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS codes, in the jargon), but it varies, and an easy way for a region’s tech cheerleader to grow its numbers is to change that definition. 

For example, among the Philadelphia region’s best known tech companies, Phenom in Montgomery County and Crossbeam in Philadelphia, many might be listed as “software publishers.” 

But Northern Liberties-based SEER Interactive might be coded as “computer systems design services” and robotics firm Burro might be “commercial and service industry machinery manufacturing. Meanwhile, GoPuff might be “couriers and express delivery services.”

To be more inclusive of this wide swath, and better track this mushy sector, a wave of service providers have emerged. Baltimore’s EcoMap and Dutch company DealRoom are examples; each lets economic development groups tag and track specific companies to get far more granular.

A second way to talk about tech jobs is to look at the far wider “information” category, as defined in government data. This grouping includes many of the industries from above, alongside web, media and knowledge work across sectors.

In this broad information sector, the Philadelphia region’s jobs shrunk between 2019 and 2023 (similar to long-term changes nationwide). But over that same timeframe, the city’s totals grew by 12%. Chester County was similar. By contrast, big, important Montgomery County saw its information sector plummet by almost 20%.

Not all information jobs are worth the same though. Low-growth journalism jobs are in that category, for example. That makes it a slightly flawed way to narrow in on what we would traditionally consider “tech jobs.”

Other economic watchers prefer a third approach: tech occupations, like software developers. This changes the numbers and adds nuance to the story.

The Philadelphia region has 30,000 software developers. That’s among the nation’s largest regional totals — though just a bit player in the regional economy (for context, Philadelphia’s booming healthcare industry has more than 75,000 registered nurses).

Montgomery County still has the most of any in the region at 5,500 tech jobs, but saw its totals decline by 10% between 2019 and 2023. That rate of decline was similar in Chester County, which had 3,500 of those jobs in 2023. 

Delaware’s New Castle County, on the other hand, has more than 4,000 roles — a number that’s remained stable over the last five years — with JP Morgan Chase and CapitalOne among the larger employers. One of the region’s fastest-growing counties over this time period was Mercer County, which saw eye-popping 20% growth and now also has more than 4,000 software developers. 

Philadelphia’s software developer boom

By early 2020, Philadelphia had a decade of unbroken growth in its software developer population. It’s the result of a post-Great Recession surge that the city had also seen among its startup sector and tech industry jobs. 

That all changed during the pandemic, which brought surging growth and a painful collapse followed by higher remote work. 

The result is that Philadelphia’s software developer total fared better than Montgomery and Chester counties. It did still moderately decline, primarily thanks to a wave of Center City core startups and other employers that shifted more jobs remotely — but now is growing again.

In 2024, Philadelphia city matters more for the region than it did before. It’s just a matter of where leaders in space will take us next.