5 stats to explain Pittsburgh’s tech job opportunities and challenges right now

When it comes to salaries, remote workers and diversity, where does Pittsburgh stand in comparison to other cities?

According to Technical.ly’s new Tech Economy Dashboard, which features proprietary data sourced by Lightcast, the region is keeping up with other cities in some ways but stuck behind in others.

Here’s a snapshot of what’s changed and what hasn’t for the Steel City in 2023.

1. The average software developer in Pittsburgh earns $104,569.

As of 2022, there were 8,569 software developers in Pittsburgh. Of those software developers, the median salary is $104,569, with the average hourly earnings at $52.59. This median salary is slightly lower than in places like Philadelphia, which has a median salary of $105,731 (and more than 27,000 software developers).

Pittsburgh is also lagging in tech job .growth compared to its fellow Pennsylvania city: Its count of software developers has grown by 10.24% between 2018 and 2023, compared to 24.11% in Philly. As for Technical.ly’s other markets: Delaware’s dev count grew by 26.85%, DC’s grew by 31.15%, and Baltimore’s grew by 41.48%.

2. In Pittsburgh, 28.01% of software developers aren’t white men, but only 2.34% of software developers are Black.

Among Steel City’s 49,672 tech occupations — that is, any role coded by the federal government as “Computer and Information Technology” jobs, regardless of what industry they work in — 8,569 are software engineers, as noted. Within that concentration, 22.19% of those employees are Asian, 2.34% are Black and 1.45% are Latino. Compare this to the 33.9%, 4.44% and 2.58% of employees from the Asian, Black, and Latino populations, respectively, in Philadelphia.

3. There were 2,077 tech job postings in August 2023 in comparison to the 4,861 postings in August 2022.

As was the case in Philly, the number of tech job postings has more than halved since this time last year. Although institutions such as BNY Mellon, PNC Bank and Humana are leading the way by doing the most tech hiring in Pittsburgh, after a series of closures and layoffs in 2022, many companies appear to be taking a cautious approach to hiring. (When is that recession coming?)

4. The top skill requested in Pittsburgh job postings has been communications.

Soft skills still matter: In Pittsburgh, 2,856 tech job posts called for communications skills in contrast, compared to technical support at the low end of the top 20 most-requested skills, with just 668 mentions. Other skills that were widely requested included management, computer science and problem solving.

5. Only 10.8% of Pittsburgh workers skip the office.

Of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area’s 2.5 million people, 10.8% of the workers are working remotely. This number leaves Pittsburgh second to last of the seven cities compared in the Tech Economy Dashboard, with more remote workers than just Delaware’s 9.8%. Denver and DC each have 15.4%, Atlanta has 13.2%, Philadelphia has 11.7%, and Baltimore has 11.2%.