A recent report by California-based high-tech industry group Engine Advocacy ranked Michigan third in the nation for high tech job growth in 2010-11.
The report showed Michigan’s 6.9 percent growth in high-tech employment comfortably beating the national average of 2.6 percent.
High tech job locations in Washtenaw County include the Toyota and Hyundai technical centers found here.
Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com
Much of Michigan’s growth numbers came from the Lansing metropolitan area as well as the Detroit suburbs of Warren, Troy, and Farmington Hills. Lansing was the sixth fastest growing metropolitan area for high-tech jobs with impressive 17.6 percent growth for the year.
The Warren, Troy, Farmington Hills area also was listed as a Top-25 metro area nationally with 13 percent growth.
Washtenaw County grew at a slower rate, only adding high-tech jobs by approximately 0.2 percent during the course of the year. However, the county has the second-highest level of high-tech employment in the state with 9.7 percent of the county’s jobs coming in the high-tech sector.
That’s second only to Oakland County where 11 percent of jobs are high-tech. Both counties are far above Michigan’s 5 percent and the national average of 5.6 percent of jobs that are in high-tech fields.
The average wage for a high-tech job in Michigan is $82,960 according to the study, completed by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. The national average for jobs in the category is $95,832.
For cities like Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti with major state-funded universities, the real percentage of employees in the high-tech sector could be even higher. The percentages used in the study only examined private-sector workforce and did not include researchers working in university laboratories.
Ben Freed covers business for AnnArbor.com. You can sign up here to receive Business Review updates every week. Reach out to Ben at 734-623-2528 or email him at benfreed@annarbor.com. Follow him on twitter @BFreedinA2