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Metro Tech Market

Composite score for broader CBSA/commute-shed tech labor-market gravity using ACS metro-level occupation, education, income, high-income household, and population-scale signals.

Scale0-100

Higher values rank better for this score.

How It's Calculated

The latest published score is normalized to a 0-100 scale. The method below explains what the score rewards, with technical source metadata available for audit.

Scoring Method

How the ranking is built

Metro Tech Market rewards places inside broader commute sheds with stronger tech labor-market gravity, high-end income signals, educated workforce depth, and population scale.

  1. 1

    Each place is matched to a county from its stored coordinates, then the county is mapped to a Census CBSA.

  2. 2

    CBSA-level computer/math occupation share, STEM occupation share, education, income, high-income households, median earnings, and population are converted into CBSA-population-weighted percentile-rank component scores.

  3. 3

    The composite is a weighted average: 25% software/tech occupation concentration, 15% STEM workforce, 15% metro knowledge economy, 35% Top-Tier Career Upside, and 10% metro population scale.

Technical details
Score TypeMaster Score

Read from the current master score table for this criterion.

Ranking BasisSingle Score

The top 10 below ignore your blended relocation weights and sort only by Metro Tech Market.

No source details available for this score.

What This Score Means

Metro Tech Market rewards places inside broader commute sheds with stronger tech labor-market gravity, high-end income signals, educated workforce depth, and population scale.

Statistics Feeding This Score

  • Matched CBSA

    County-to-CBSA match from the place representative point.

    Source: U.S. Census CBSA delineation files
  • Computer/math and STEM workforce

    ACS CBSA employed residents in computer/math and broader computer, engineering, and science occupations.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
  • Education and earnings

    ACS CBSA bachelor's-plus, advanced-degree, median earnings, and median household income inputs.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
  • $200k+ households

    ACS CBSA share and count of households with income of $200,000 or more.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year
  • Population scale

    ACS CBSA total population used as a labor-market depth signal.

    Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-Year

Source Data

Source: U.S. Census American Community Survey 5-YearCensus ACS 5-year estimates for housing, income, population, occupation, education, and race/ethnicity inputs at place, county, or CBSA geography depending on the score.Source: U.S. Census CBSA delineation filesCounty-to-CBSA delineation workbook used to map places into broader metropolitan or micropolitan labor-market areas.

Known Limits

  • These are ACS CBSA-level resident and household proxies, not direct measures of live job postings, company headquarters, venture capital, stock-compensation offers, or exact occupation salaries.
  • Places inherit the score of their matched county's CBSA, so the score captures broad commute-shed gravity rather than neighborhood- or municipality-specific conditions.
  • High-end opportunity is proxied with $200k+ household share/count plus median earnings and income; it is not an exact top-X-percent job-offer model.
  • Counties outside Census CBSAs receive a zero for the metro-market component rather than a rural labor-market estimate.

Top 10 Locations

Ranked by Metro Tech Market.

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