Technology employment growth in Arizona outpaced California and other Southwest states, and Pima County led the state’s most populous counties in growth of tech firms in 2016, says a new study issued by the Arizona Technology Council.
Arizona’s more than 8,000 tech firms supported over 168,000 jobs and paid $15.7 billion in wages in 2016, according to a study performed by EImpact, a Portland-based web-based research firm.
The state ranked second among six Southwest states for tech employment growth from 2015 to 2016, as workforces grew 1.4 percent, compared with 3.8 percent in Nevada. Utah came in third at 0.7 percent growth followed by California at 0.5 percent.
Arizona rated third behind California and Texas for tech industry average pay, at $77,317 in 2016. Wages at Arizona tech firms rose 2.3 percent in 2016, but pay in the state remained lower than the national average, the study found.
In one measure broken down by county, Pima County saw a 6.3 percent increase in the number of tech firms operating in the county in 2016 compared with 2015, while that number grew 1.9 percent statewide.
New tech companies in Tucson in 2016 included Vector Launch, a rocket maker and small-satellite launch company that now employs about 65 people locally, and 14 smaller startups based on University of Arizona faculty technologies, including Regulonix LLC, which is developing a new class of non-opioid painkillers.
Some other findings of the Tech Council report, which is available online at www.aztechcouncil.org:
- For every job in technology industries, there are 1.04 jobs that support technology such as human resources, accounting and sales.
- Arizona’s technology industry contributed more than $32.5 million in total taxes in 2016.
- There are 2,156 startups in Arizona listed on AngelList, a clearinghouse for startup funding, with an average technology startup valuation of $3.9 million.
