New York unseats San Francisco as the top market for tech talent, CBRE reports

New York has overtaken San Francisco as the leading U.S. market for tech talent, according to a new report from CBRE, as CNBC reported on August 21. The shift marks a notable reordering of the country's tech hiring landscape, which has long centered on the Bay Area.

The CBRE report also found that AI-related roles now account for nearly one-third of all tech-talent job listings in the United States, per CNBC. That concentration of AI demand is helping reshape which metros attract the most hiring activity, as employers increasingly look beyond established West Coast hubs.

CBRE is one of the world's largest commercial real estate and advisory firms, and its tech talent reports are widely tracked by real estate investors and corporate real estate teams. The findings appeared in CNBC's Property Play newsletter, written by Diana Olick, which covers opportunities for real estate investors across market segments.

The ranking shift reflects broader trends that have been building since the pandemic-era dispersal of tech workers and the subsequent wave of layoffs at major San Francisco-area employers. New York's deep pool of finance, media, and professional-services firms has increasingly drawn technology roles as those industries accelerate AI adoption, while San Francisco has seen elevated office vacancy and a slower recovery in in-person headcounts.

Both the lead source and the corroborating source for this story are the same CNBC article; no additional independent reporting was available to cross-check specific figures or expand on CBRE's methodology. The full report's details on ranking methodology, year-over-year comparisons, and other metros were not included in the available source material.