5 stats to explain Delaware tech’s diversity and job opportunities right now

In Delaware, we don’t really like to compare ourselves to other cities on the Eastern Seaboard. We know there are more restaurants in Philly and more museums in DC. We know the Wilmington Riverfront isn’t Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. We know. We’re not trying to be those places (as much as we love them), so why put us side by side?

Well, when it comes to economic data, comparisons can be very interesting. Sure, the Delaware numbers are always smaller, but when you look at percentages, Delaware is right there with the surrounding cities when it comes to the tech economy — especially when it comes to things like diversity, earning and remote work.

We dug through Technical.ly’s Tech Economy Dashboard featuring proprietary data sourced by Lightcast to see how Delaware stacks up with nearby tech markets of Philadelphia, Baltimore, DC, and Pittsburgh, plus Atlanta (because why not?).

Here’s what we found:

1. Delaware saw 979 tech job postings in October 2023 compared to 2,093 postings in October 2022.

In line with other markets, Delaware job postings have fallen dramatically since 2022, with about half as many posted at the same time in 2023.

Banks make up half of the top 10 companies by number of tech job listings in Delaware — no surprise there. JPMorgan Chase is far and away the company with the most Delaware tech job postings in the past 30 days, with 168 at last count.

2. Over 52% of software developers in Delaware are not white men, but only 6.7% are Black.

Delaware’s percentage of Black software developers is low, considering 23% of the state population across the state is Black — but it’s higher than Philadelphia, with 4.4% Black devs, and Pittsburgh, with 2.3%. Looking south, the percentages are higher: 11% in Baltimore, 9% in DC and 13% in Atlanta.

3. Just over half of Delaware’s tech workforce is white.

Specifically, 58.6% of Delaware’s tech workforce is white, with Asian as the next largest demographic at 20.7% followed by Black at 14.1%. That’s fairly diverse — Philadelphia’s tech workforce is 67.4% white, and Pittsburgh is 80.5% white.

Again, looking south, there is more diversity in Baltimore and DC, and especially Atlanta, where it’s 51.8% white, 18% Asian and 23.5% Black. Hispanic workers are included in the data, and make up less than 6% in every market. That is severely underrepresented, but since Hispanic is not a race, it’s hard to know whether some are simply classified as white, Black or Asian in the data.

4. Only 9.8% of Delaware workers are remote.

Looking at Delaware as a whole state, it’s not a big surprise that the percentage of remote workers is the lowest among the large city data. Two thirds of the state is rural or small towns — although our broadband is nearly universal. What is surprising is that Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Philadelphia have only marginally more remote workers (10.8%, 11.2% and 11.7%, respectively). DC has about 15%.

5. Delaware software developers earn slightly more than devs in Philly and Pittsburgh.

The median 2022 salary for a software developer in Delaware was $118,233. That’s less than the DC median of $134,015, the Baltimore median of $131,136 or Atlanta’s median of $123,112 — but surprise, it beats Philadelphia ($115,299) and Pittsburgh ($103,329).