NEW ORLEANS – Financial website SmartAsset reports New Orleans ranks No. 1 for growth in technology jobs in the nation, and No. 5 for women in tech.
The reports states, “Compared to other big cities across the country, New Orleans appears to be one of the ones with a better environment for female tech workers. Women and men in mathematical and computer occupations earn about the same amount of money. And women fill about 35 percent of those positions.
“The number of tech jobs (math and computer-related positions) in New Orleans grew by about 32 percent between 2012 and 2015. That’s the largest four-year change in tech employment growth in our study. Based on our analysis, the only other city with an equally large increase in tech jobs is Mesa, Arizona.”
In relation to the success in New Orleans, SmartAsset also found:
• A recent report from the National Center for Women & Technology found that women made up 57 percent of the professional workforce but only 25 percent of the employees in computer-related occupations in 2015.
• According to Silicon Valley Bank’s 2017 Startup Outlook Report, roughly 70 percent of startups say they have no women on their boards of directors and 54 percent report having zero women in executive roles.
• Gender pay inequality remains in the tech industry as well at every level. Data from Payscale reveals the uncontrolled gender pay gap for individual contributors and managers/ supervisors is 19 percent and 22 percent, respectively.
SmartAsset reports the recent rankings were derived from 59 of the largest U.S. cities in which there are enough tech workers to provide statistically reliable data from the Census Bureau, and they were ranked across four metrics: the gender pay gap in tech, income after housing costs, women as a percentage of the tech workforce and four-year tech employment growth.
SmartAsset’s key findings also included:
• Women are still the minority – Nationwide, the percentage of computer and mathematical jobs filled by women remains around 26 percent.
• D.C. takes the top spot – The nation’s capital ranks as the best city for women in tech. It has one of the smallest gaps in gender pay and has a higher proportion of women in computer and math-related roles than most cities across the country.
• The gender pay gap isn’t getting smaller – The average female-to-male earnings ratio is 84.8 percent. Last year it was 86.7 percent. While female tech workers earn more than their male counterparts in a few cities, more needs to be done to ensure that women are receiving equal pay for equal work.
Read the SmartAsset report here
