New York has eclipsed the San Francisco Bay Area as North America’s largest tech talent hub, according to a CBRE report. The New York metropolitan area reached 394,300 tech workers in 2025, driven by financial sector hiring and AI growth, while Bay Area employment fell 6 percent.
The coastal balance of power in American technology has shifted. After 13 years of tracking North American tech talent markets, real estate and investment firm CBRE published its annual report showing that the New York metropolitan area has surpassed the San Francisco Bay Area to claim the top spot. New York’s tech workforce reached 394,300 workers in 2025, edging past the Bay Area’s 375,730.
The milestone reflects a broader economic divergence between the two regions since the tech downturn of 2022. While Silicon Valley and surrounding tech enclaves underwent waves of layoffs and workforce contractions, New York’s labor market expanded steadily across multiple industries.
Diverging Job Markets in New York and San Francisco
The numbers underlying the shift reveal two distinct trajectories. New York’s tech talent workforce grew by more than 8 percent from 2022 to 2025, adding 30,640 jobs in an expansion fueled by finance, healthcare, government, and real estate sectors. By contrast, the Bay Area’s tech talent workforce dropped by 6 percent over the same three-year period, shedding roughly 23,900 workers amid widespread corporate belt-tightening.
Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center, pointed to the structural differences in how both regions deploy technical labor. In San Francisco, tech jobs make up more than 10 percent of total employment, but a staggering 61 percent of that tech talent works strictly within the tech industry itself, leaving the local market vulnerable to sector-specific downturns. In New York City, only 34 percent of tech workers are employed directly by tech companies. Another 21 percent work in tech roles within finance, insurance, and real estate—industries collectively known as FIRE.
“The story there is that there’s been cuts in the Bay Area, so the tech industry has contracted the size of the tech talent workforce, and the finance sector [in New York] has hired a lot of tech talent and a lot of AI workers.”
Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center
This cross-sector integration gave New York considerable resilience against the tech pullback that began in 2022. Financial institutions in Manhattan adopted artificial intelligence tools early, snapping up specialized developers and data architects who might otherwise have looked to traditional Silicon Valley firms.
Artificial Intelligence Reshapes Office Leasing and Workplace Culture
Artificial intelligence is driving a new chapter in commercial real estate across both markets. Across the United States and Canada, AI-specific tech roles grew by 45 percent over the past year, with San Francisco and New York each adding more than 20,000 AI jobs since mid-2025. AI-related roles now account for nearly one-third of all tech-talent job listings nationwide.
While New York holds the crown for overall headcount, San Francisco still retains the top spot on CBRE’s broader Tech Talent Scorecard Ranking, which weighs metrics like talent quality, average salaries, and recent university graduates. The Bay Area also remains the epicenter for AI leasing activity. AI companies accounted for 58 percent of all leasing in San Francisco during the first half of the year, and roughly 30 percent of total office demand there since 2023, totaling about 10 million square feet.
Unlike the remote-work heavy era of the post-pandemic tech boom, the AI sector relies heavily on in-person collaboration. According to CBRE data, startup innovation culture in the Bay Area demands an office presence of at least four, and frequently five or six, days a week.
“Through this whole innovation process, being together and working in person is just much more efficient and innovative.”
Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center
Corporate Giants Go All In on Manhattan Office Space
Manhattan’s commercial real estate market is absorbing this influx. Major players have secured sprawling footprints across the borough this year, turning heads with multimillion-dollar acquisitions and leases.
Artificial intelligence giant Anthropic made waves in April by securing a 465,630-square-foot deal to lease the entirety of AEW Capital Management’s property at 330 Hudson Street. Short-term rental platform Airbnb followed suit in mid-June with an $82 million agreement to buy 281 Park Avenue South for a new East Coast hub. Meanwhile, health tech platform Tennr clinched a 124,733-square-foot lease at 345 Hudson Street, and Google renewed 410,556 square feet at 315 Hudson Street.
Altogether, AI leasing activity in Manhattan surpassed 1.8 million square feet, eclipsing the roughly 1.4 million square feet recorded across all of 2025. Lauren Crowley Corrinet, vice chair at CBRE, noted that the city’s appeal lies in its sheer scale and transit infrastructure.
“The region combines a robust pipeline of graduates with a growing concentration of AI talent and sustained job creation, making it one of North America’s most attractive locations for technology companies.”
Lauren Crowley Corrinet, vice chair at CBRE
Looking Ahead: The Net Impact of Automation
As artificial intelligence continues to transform corporate operations, questions remain regarding long-term employment levels. Public polling indicates widespread anxiety; a survey released by the Pew Research Center showed that 71 percent of U.S. adults believe AI will reduce the total number of jobs over the next two decades, up from 64 percent in 2024.
Yet labor market analysts observe that hiring demand for specialized data scientists and hardware engineers remains robust. Rather than cutting head counts en masse, companies appear to be shifting labor priorities, exchanging roles for technical talent capable of implementing machine learning systems.
For now, the expansion of tech talent beyond traditional Silicon Valley boundaries appears durable. As companies figure out how to integrate automated tools into their daily workflows, metropolitan centers with diverse economic foundations—particularly those anchored by finance and heavy university pipelines—are positioned to capture the next phase of industry growth.
