Diversity in Oregon's Tech Workforce
Tech association launches next generation of tech industry dashboard powered by eIMPACT
You can read the full scoop on the Technology Association of Oregon's release of their latest tech industry dashboard in the Portland Business Journal. But we've excerpted a few highlights here, along with the dashboard itself.
For the past five years we've been working with TAO to produce industry data and turn it into a narrative. Tech is arguably one of the more complex "industries" – the TAO definition of the group of sectors that together make up "tech" is nearly 40 individual NAICS codes. The companies and associated workforce of this group have outpaced economic growth in the state for years, and do not show signs of slowing. However, in TAO's words, there is work to be done when it comes to who is seeing the opportunities to participate in this lucrative space.
Not everything is moving up and to the right when it comes to the tech industry. One area where the Oregon tech industry has lagged is diversification of its workforce. This has been widely reported in recent years and should come as no surprise to someone reading this article.
- Skip Newberry, CEO, Technology Association of Oregon
There were some surprises in the data as well, including which county showed the highest percent of diversity relative to others. You'll have to explore the dashboard below (see the heat map section) to find out which. And there's more than diversity data too; we broke down earnings by tech occupation for the state's three biggest tech markets, analyzed top skills present in job postings vs. candidate profiles, and painted the picture of the tech education pipeline by program area. Whoa!
More public data and private data is available than ever before, and eIMPACT has stayed ahead of these trends, incorporating more data sources into their platform. Consequently, we are now able to show diversity in tech employment by race and occupation code, broken out by county throughout Oregon.
- Skip's words, not ours :)
Oregon Tech Industry Dashboard
