‘New York, the Silicon City’

Michael Mandel, writing for the New York Times:

The rapid growth of minorities in New York tech jobs reflects, in part, the soaring number of tech degrees earned by minorities in recent years. For example, bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences granted to Hispanic students have risen by more than 40 percent nationally over the past three years, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. That supply is then sucked up by the tightness of the city’s technology and information labor markets, which has forced local employers to reach out beyond the usual sources.

This is great.

Instead, the true weakness in the city’s economy right now lies in the leisure and hospitality industry, which employs almost 400,000 workers in the city. The number of jobs has been rising, but real pay has fallen, perhaps because of continuing weakness in the financial and legal sector, which generates so much demand for hotels and restaurants. These real wage declines undercut gains in the rest of the local economy.

What lessons does this have for the new mayor? New York’s gains came, in part, from the aggressive efforts of the Bloomberg administration to stimulate the technology and information sector. These included funding tech incubators; the “Made in NY” marketing campaign to support small tech companies; the rapid extension of broadband access across the city; the city’s broad-reaching Open Data initiative, which makes city data available to the public and software developers; and the selection of Cornell and Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, to open a huge new campus on Roosevelt Island.

This reminds me that the SF Bay Area really needs some solid regional leadership.

Broadband is still a joke, and it seems like most city governments are content to live with tech companies, and don’t have a huge interest in supporting them.