Silicon Valley job seekers are more likely to scout for greener pastures outside of the Bay Area compared with those in other tech hubs, according to unsettling research results that job site Indeed.com released Tuesday.
An estimated 44 percent of all job seekers and 38 percent of tech job seekers in Santa Clara County and the San Francisco metro area desire work in positions outside the Bay Area, the Indeed study determined.
“Is Silicon Valley at risk of a brain drain?” Indeed asked in a blog post that sketched the results of the study. The post added, “San Francisco and San Jose had the largest increase in outbound search over the last five years.”
At present, 44.4 percent of all job seekers in Santa Clara County and San Francisco are hunting for work outside of their current metro areas. That’s up sharply from the 26.6 percent who were conducting such searches in 2012.
This year, 38.4 percent of Santa Clara County and San Francisco tech job seekers are scouting for technology jobs outside of their areas. That represents a large increase from the 27.2 percent of technology workers who were seeking jobs outside those two metro areas in 2012.
San Francisco tech workers have the shortest job tenure of any in the nation, Indeed determined — and the San Jose metro area wasn’t far behind in workers displaying a restless nature.
The average tenure, measured in months, for software engineers in San Francisco was 27 months. Seattle was the next-shortest at 28 months. The San Jose area ranked third-shortest, at 33 months — tied with Austin, Texas, for technology employment churn. Still, the Santa Clara County software engineer tenure wasn’t that much shorter than the national average of 35 months.
Separate surveys by the Bay Area Council have suggested residents of the region have become increasingly anxious to flee the region and express less confidence in the region’s economy.
“Silicon Valley job seekers, including highly paid tech workers, are looking for jobs outside their own metro area at a much higher rate than other metros,” said Raj Mukherjee, senior vice president of product at Indeed. “This implies they are aware that highly paid job opportunities are being created not just in Silicon valley, but in other parts of the U.S.”
Each of the metros Indeed examined had more than 100,000 searches a month over the past year.
Photo courtesy of Indeed