Tech Jobs Down 2 Percent in 2010

The U.S. high-tech industry shed a total of 115,800 jobs in 2010, for a total of 5.75 million workers, according to a new report by TechAmerica.

The 2011 Cyberstates report, released last week, found that the overall 2 percent decline in private sector tech employment was less than half of the 249,500 jobs lost in 2009, which followed several years of sustained growth. Since the economic downturn began in 2007, however, the tech industry fared better than the private sector as a whole, with a 4 percent decline in employment versus 7 percent in the private sector.

The report highlighted four high-tech sectors -- high-tech manufacturing, communications services, software services and engineering and tech services -- and found that only the software services sector experienced job growth. That sector added 22,800 jobs, for 1.4 percent overall growth. The communications services sector experienced the greatest losses, with 72,100, or 5.5 percent, jobs lost. Some key occupations, like engineering managers, computer hardware engineers, database administrators and aerospace engineers, all managed to keep unemployment below 5 percent, TechAmerica found.

Despite job losses, however, high-tech workers continue to be paid well, earning an average of $86,800 in 2010, 93 percent more than the average private sector wage of $45,000.

The leading states for high-tech employment continued to be California (931,000 jobs), Texas (456,500 jobs), New York (294,700 jobs), Virginia (277,600 jobs) and Florida (267,500 jobs). For the sixth straight year, Virginia led the nation with the highest concentration of technology workers, with nearly 10 percent of private sector workers employed by the tech industry, according to the report.