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Austin: Good Place for Jobs, Great Place for Techies

Austin salaries rank well among U.S. cities, with tech salaries leading the pack.
Huma Munir, KUT News
Austin salaries rank well among U.S. cities, with tech salaries leading the pack.

A wealth of employment and salary data for the Austin region has just been released, and it confirms Austin has become a high-tech capital.

The Austin American-Statesman Business Blog notes that wages for Austin tech professionals leapt approximately 13% last year. The rise lead to an average salary of approximately $89,500, according to employment website publisher Dice Holdings.

The Austin Business Journal highlights some other figures: The average Austin salary comes in at just over $46,000, and average hourly pay is tallied at approximately $22 says the Journal, citing figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The BLS has more fresh data on their website. Statewide, employment figures from December 2011 (the most recently available month) have total non-farm employment at 10,649,200. That’s a slight uptick from November 2011’s figure (10,629,000).

KUT reporting partners at The Texas Tribune have created an interactive application for viewing the December job data by city and county. It tabulates the size of the labor force in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos area as 918,200, with a 6.3% unemployment rate.

See anything in the employment numbers that raises your interest? Leave us a comment below.

Wells has been a part of KUT News since 2012, when he was hired as the station's first online reporter. He's currently the social media host and producer for Texas Standard, KUT's flagship news program. In between those gigs, he served as online editor for KUT, covering news in Austin, Central Texas and beyond.