New York City’s Technology Labor Market Has Surpassed San Francisco: Report – Commercial Observer
It’s official. New York is employing more tech workers than the San Francisco Bay area.
According to an annual CBRE report on North American tech talent, the New York metropolitan area’s tech workforce reached 394,300 in 2025. The stat marks an 8.4 percent increase from 2022 that added 30,640 jobs. Meanwhile, San Francisco’s tech employment fell by 6 percent over the same period, totaling 375,730 jobs in 2025.
This is the first time in the report’s 13-year history that the Big Apple has come out ahead. The city’s diversified job market helped set it apart, Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s tech insights center, told Commercial Observer.
“What really pushed New York past the San Francisco Bay Area has been the job reductions that we’ve seen [in San Francisco], with a lot of the announced layoffs, and the fact that New York has continued to grow,” Yasukochi said.
San Francisco remains in North America’s top spot for its pool of tech talent, however, ranked across 13 metrics. The report, which analyzed the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and LinkedIn data, found that tech jobs make up more than 10 percent of total employment in San Francisco, compared to just 4.2 percent in New York.
But a whopping 61 percent of San Francisco’s tech talent works directly in the tech industry, according to CBRE’s report, leaving its general labor market vulnerable. In New York City, just 34 percent of its tech workers work within the industry, while 21 percent work in tech roles in finance, insurance and real estate industries (otherwise known as FIRE).
“[That] has given New York resilience from the tech downturn that broadly started in 2022, in terms of employment,” Yasukochi said. “But, obviously, with the artificial intelligence industry coming into play, that’s turned around quite substantially in the last year.”
Yasukochi added that New York also benefits from a massive university infrastructure and lower wages than San Francisco, on average, for roles like software engineers — a boon to employers eyeing East Coast headquarters.
News of New York City’s relative emergence in the tech world comes as its major players gobble up Manhattan’s office space.
“The region combines a robust pipeline of graduates with a growing concentration of AI talent and sustained job creation, making it one of North America’s most attractive locations for technology companies,” Lauren Crowley Corrinet, vice chair at CBRE, said in a statement.
Manhattan’s tech business has been punching above its weight class in the office market this year. AI giant Anthropic turned tech heads eastward in April when Commercial Observer reported that it was securing a 465,630-square-foot deal to lease all of AEW Capital Management’s 330 Hudson Street. Plus, short-term rental platform Airbnb struck an $82 million deal with Aby Rosen’s RFR in mid-June to buy 281 Park Avenue South for its new East Coast office hub.
The city saw 800,000 square feet of office demand from AI businesses in the second quarter of 2026, according to Colliers data, surpassing the total yearly demand of 2025. The most recent quarter clinched a 124,733-square-foot deal at 345 Hudson Street from health care tech platform Tennr, and Google renewed 410,556 square feet at 315 Hudson Street.
AI leasing in Manhattan’s office market has already surpassed 1.8 million square feet this year, well above the roughly 1.4 million square feet of activity in 2025.
But San Francisco’s tech-powered office market is no slouch, either. AI leasing activity nationwide remains most concentrated in the City by the Bay, according to CBRE data, where
AI-related companies have accounted for 30 percent of office demand since 2023, and half of all lease deals in the first half of 2026.
Emily Davis can be reached at edavis@commercialobserver.com.
