Tech Strategy Report

THE WHY

ECOSYSTEM

GROWTH

TALENT

RESOURCES

Overview

Building Diversity

Developing Talent

Reskilling Talent

Educating Talent

Attracting Talent

Brain Drain Market Opportunity to Attract Talent from Outside Regions

Attracting Tech Talent

-25,000

The tech labor market is mobile. In general, tech workers are attracted to areas that offer the most opportunities in their field, with the best pay relative to cost of living. These workers also generally place a high amount of value on placemaking and other community factors when choosing a place to live. Often, these criteria are not aligned with where an individual received their degree. Many of the country’s largest metropolitan areas have experienced a so-called “brain drain” in tech in recent years. For example, the New York metropolitan area lost 65,500 tech workers from 2016 to 2020, while Boston and Chicago lost 37,500 and 32,407 , respectively, over the same period. As tech workers continue to move across the country, we must ensure organizations and companies across Greater Grand Rapids are making targeted efforts to attract these talented individuals to our region. Organizations such as Hello West Michigan, a regional talent attraction and retention organization, are poised to scale such attraction efforts.

-25,391 LA/Orange Co.

-26,000

-27,000

-31,851 Washignton D.C.

-32,000

-32,407 Chicago

-37,500

-37,376 Boston

Hello West Michigan Case Study Plus-Circle

-65,000

-65,478 New York

CBRE Research, U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, Statistics Canada, National Center for Education Statistics (Metro), Canadian Universities, 2021

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