Despite a rankings dip, Baltimore’s tech talent strength scores high marks

Baltimore may be losing workers, but the picture isn’t as dire as its lower score on an annual national tech workforce report may seem.

That portrait of Charm City’s tech and tech-adjacent labor ecosystem comes from national real estate services firm CBRE’s 2023 Scoring Tech Talent Report, which ranked Baltimore #17 among the United States and Canada’s top 50 tech talent markets. The city and region slid three spots from 2022’s ranking of #14, with the city’s aggregate score dropping from 55.2 to 52.7.

Credit at least part of that decrease to the region’s loss in total tech sector talent, from 79,000 employed in 2021 (the year for which 2022’s employment numbers account) to 76,460 in 2022 (the corresponding year for 2023’s employment figures). However, for software developers and programmers, that number increased from 22,630 to 24,380, and average sector wages jumped from $108,669 to $112,097. Office vacancy rates were also down, from 17% in the 2022 report to 5% in this year’s edition.

These changes took place amid a national backdrop that saw the US tech talent headcount increase from 7.3% between May 2021 and 2022. Moreover, according to CBRE Executive Vice President David Fields, Baltimore’s mix of comparative affordability and public sector-dependent economic assets make it more resilient and subject to growth despite any layoff-bearing economic headwinds.

“Baltimore tech professionals are among the highest paid tech workers in the country, despite living in one of the more affordable large coastal cities,” Fields said in a written statement. “Baltimore has a growing cybersecurity community and 23.9% of tech workers concentrated in government. We anticipate that Baltimore tech companies and workers should continue to see growth despite current economic uncertainty given the relative stability of the public sector.”

CBRE Mid-Atlantic Research Director Stephanie Jennings additionally cited such relatively stable employers as the National Security Agency, Department of Defense, NASA and other related homeland security agencies; life sciences employers like the University of Maryland BioPark and Johns Hopkins University; and financial services firms like T. Rowe Price and Morgan Stanley as contributing to the city’s cross-sector economic foundations.

“Major employers of tech talent in Baltimore run from national science and defense, to life sciences and healthcare, and financial services companies,” Jennings told Technical.ly via email. “These are very stable employers, some of which are growing. So, the market is less subject to the volatility of big tech companies.”

Here are some other statistics and highlights that influenced the Baltimore area’s standing:

• Despite dropping between 2021 and 2022, Baltimore’s tech talent headcount increased by 5% between 2017 and 2022 (albeit a smaller increase than the 7.6% from 2016 to 2021).
• The market ranks #4 in the country’s average annual wages for tech talent in the tech industry, just behind Boston and ahead of the DMV. (This figure factored in 2021 numbers.)
• The wages stand out amid more affordable costs of residential and commercial real estate than those of other nearby and similarly top-tier hubs, with an average asking office rent of $23.84 per square foot and apartment rent of $1,658 per month.
• Government jobs account for 23.9% of all tech talent jobs in Baltimore.

See the report