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New York City is in the middle of a tech boom. The largest metro area in the country now also boasts the largest number of tech workers, even more than San Francisco's Bay Area. So I would say a good, like, half of my tech friends ended up in New York and then the other half in the Bay Area. I was really targeting larger East Coast cities like D.C., New York, and Boston, and applying for a wider range of jobs within those markets. Between 2022 and 2025, New York's pool of tech talent grew by over 30,000 new employees. San Francisco's, on the other hand, shrank by nearly 24,000.
The city is also seeing more investment from new tech giants. OpenAI recently leased a 90,000 square foot office in Lower Manhattan, and Anthropic, which is leasing a 16-story building, says it will double its New York workforce to 1000 employees in 2026. And though the past few years have been tumultuous for the tech industry, with mass layoffs sweeping across the sector, it's not just big tech companies that are driving the new rise of Silicon Alley. Part of why the number of tech workers here has grown so exponentially is because tech workers don't just work in tech. You could also go work for a financial institution or a bank, and those can all be different types of tech jobs.
And I think that's what's really accelerated. The growth of tech here is that increasingly, everyone is hiring for tech. The importance of tech in New York is clear. But is it a sustainable industry in the nation's biggest city? And how might its rise affect everyday New Yorkers? I think going into college, I didn't really have, like, a set goal of where I wanted to be. 22-year-old Chloe Lim grew up in Irvine, California. She attended Rice University in Houston, Texas, where she majored in computer science.
When I was like a freshman and sophomore earlier in college, it seemed like a lot of my upperclassmen friends were going to, you know, like the Bay Area. But I found that, like, closer to, like, my junior and senior year, a lot of my friends and myself were kind of looking more towards New York and the Bay Area. Before graduating in 2026, Lim considered job offers on both sides of the U.S., but eventually opted to accept a job in New York City. She now works for startup Thread AI, one of many new AI firms cropping up all over New York. What made you choose to come to New York over the Bay Area? Like, what are some of the factors that drew you to the city?
I feel like life in the Bay Area is just not as exciting as in New York. You get to meet so many different people and there's always so much to do in New York. I was really drawn to that. The excitement and diversity of New York is why experts believe many young tech workers are coming into the city. It is just such an attraction for young people to come to the city and live here and try it and test it out, because of all of the incredible value here.
New York's universities also produce a lot of computer science majors who often stay in the city after graduating. We produced around 70,000 tech degree grads between 2022 and 2024, which is the latest data that I think we all have. That's about 50% more than the next largest tech generating hub, which is sort of the LA Orange County part of the country. Tech companies have leased 35,000,000ft² of office space in New York, and AI firms account for about 15% of that space. While the Bay Area still leads the nation in AI workers. New York added over 20,000 AI jobs between June 2025 and June 2026.
How big a factor is AI in New York City's tech growth? AI is, of course, a really big factor here. All of these traditional industries are thinking about how they can bring AI into the fold in their own work. They're hiring people, they're hiring consultants. They're like, what do I do? I think the interesting twist that's kind of happening now with AI is actually converting non-technical people into technical people. Now you're starting to see people, product people, product managers, and product owners. They're building the tools themselves now at this point. But a bigger factor in New York's growth is a tech hub may be found outside the tech sector.
What we're seeing is, particularly in the financial sector and the media sector, just tons of tech hiring here in New York, and that's where we're seeing the most growth. Every industry leverages technology. It's not unique to just the tech sector. It's-- media companies are hiring tech talent because tech is becoming part of the content supply chain. That's how we deliver content. That's how we create content, etc. In 2026, tech companies and startups in New York employed 104,000 tech workers like software engineers and web designers. But an additional 187,000 tech workers were employed by non-tech firms like banks and media companies.
Tech companies in the city also employed 161,000 non-tech employees, like marketing managers and sales reps. When you think about industries like finance, like real estate, industries that have been in New York for a really long time, it has become increasingly clear that technology is driving their work as well. And this is even more true right now in this AI moment than it ever has been. And so these companies are all, frankly, trying to keep up with where the technology is going. Erin Sullivan is a 25 year old software engineer from Colorado. She moved to New York in 2023 and now works for Bank of America.
Were you surprised by how many tech workers Bank of America employs? Yes, we have 60,000 within our global technology sector. So a lot of times it really feels in some ways like a tech company because we have such an emphasis on it. Location was a big factor in her decision to accept the position. I had visited once as a child to New York, and then I actually didn't come back until I was moving with my two suitcases and starting work the next day. But I think that first experience in New York and really having the freedom of just hopping on the subway and getting anywhere was so magical for me and somewhere that I knew that I wanted to end back up. But even for a young tech worker earning a high
salary, New York is still an expensive city, as well as home to one of the most competitive real estate markets in the country. Coming to New York and apartment hunting was kind of a big culture shock for me. I remember my roommate and I were, you know, like hopping on FaceTime calls throughout the summer, trying to find a good place to live. The market was like, kind of insane. I feel like the housing market was almost or a little more difficult than the job market, to be honest.
Chloe Lim and her roommate each pay about $3,000 a month for their two bedroom apartment. People in both the public and private sectors worry about how the growth of New York's tech industry might affect the city's already high cost of living. Just a few years ago, we did some research with our partners at Zillow that showed that even young tech workers who make six figure salaries right out of college, even those people were having a hard time affording apartments here in New York and you can very easily understand what that means for people who make less than that. It's not a good outcome. But despite the high cost of living, experts believe New York is still a draw for young tech workers starting their careers.
There's something about the culture of the tech sector that really matches up with the culture of a big, dynamic city like New York, and that has really benefited the growth of the tech sector here. And as that sector grows, industry advocates and city officials hope that the people working in tech will want to build not just their careers here, but their futures as well. Do you see yourself living in New York City for the long term? I think it's hard to tell for now. I've never experienced a proper winter in my life, so I'm a little afraid for the snowy winters to come. In the three months that I've been here so far,
I really like New York, so for now I'll say yes.
