To keep its constituents informed on the progress of Arizona’s technology community, the Arizona Technology Council today released its latest Quarterly Arizona Technology Industry Impact Report. Among other positive news, the data from Q4 2019 revealed that Arizona’s technology jobs are growing 2.1 times faster as compared to the U.S. economy overall, there was $864 million in venture capital investments and the average startup valuation was $3.9 million. The complete report is available on the Council’s website here.

“Seeing the growth metrics of our technology sector over the last year validates the Council’s work, as well as the work of our legislators and outstanding partners in the economic development space,” said Steven G. Zylstra, the Council’s president and CEO. “We continued to take big strides in 2019 in terms of technology companies moving to Arizona, our job and wage growth rate, and venture capital investments. We still have a lot of work to do, but the data from the last year shows great progress towards Arizona’s goal of becoming one of the nation’s top technology hubs.” 

Arizona enjoys a diverse mix of tech industries and professions, with the average technology wage nearly double the average wage in non-tech sectors. Currently, employees in computer systems design, semiconductor manufacturing, and aerospace product and parts manufacturing account for roughly half of all annual wages across the state of Arizona. 

The Council offers its Quarterly Industry Impact Report to provide its members, partners, leadership and the community at large with an update on economic development related to the state’s technology sector. The report gathers data related to the industry’s progress, including job creation, risk capital, research and development investment, tax contributions and startup growth. The report also features two new sections showing technology postings by top cities and technology employment by gender and race.

One of the critical areas of improvement the Arizona technology and science, engineering technology and math education communities are trying to make is to getting more women  involved in technology. According to an EMSI labor report collected by eImpact, 33% of Arizona’s technology jobs are held by women (As of 2018, Small Business Trends reported that only 20% of technology jobs in the United States were held by women).

“Improving diversity in the Arizona technology community is one of our top goals for 2020 and beyond,” said Zylstra. “We are working hard at the early childhood development level with programs like the SciTech Festival and Chief Science Officers to encourage and inspire more females and minorities to embrace a career in STEM. We are showing signs of improvement in those areas and we hope to see those numbers jump up in 2020.”

Additional findings of the Q4 2019 report include: 

• Arizona now has 9,303 technology companies in operation

• There are 189,926 technology jobs in Arizona

• Total industry wages: $19,825,584,368

• In 2018 and 2019, Arizona boasted two of its strongest years for venture capital investment ($944 million in 2018 and $864 million in 2019)

• Technology wages in Arizona have grown 6.76% over the past year

• Average annual industry wage: $85,874

• The top 10 Arizona cities for technology job openings include:

    • Phoenix – 66,450
    • Tucson – 16,322
    • Tempe – 14,043

On the Council’s behalf, the quarterly report is compiled by eImpact, an organization that creates web-based, data-reporting solutions designed to help cities, industries and planners drive effective policy, create new growth and engage stakeholders. The report is based on eImpact’s analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CompTIA, AngelList and others.