Regional Comparison: Education and Tech Jobs

News from: Coachella Valley Economic Partnership

At our annual Economic Summit in November, we were honored to welcome Dean Bresciani, PhD, President of North Dakota State University, as one of our guest speakers. And although we don’t particularly envy Fargo, North Dakota’s current Polar Vortex weather conditions, we do admire the bold efforts of the city and university to strengthen their economy by supporting higher education and access to high speed internet. Today, Fargo is ranked one of the 25 “hottest” cities for startups.
Also at the Economic Summit, CVEP CEO Joe Wallace challenged the audience to identify another top city for entrepreneurs from a list of obvious candidates like Boulder, CO and Austin, TX. To everyone’s surprise, the city was none other than Huntsville, AL, another city bolstered by a fine research university and a large technical talent base.
This leads us to today’s infographic: a comparison of the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA’s) centered on Fargo and Huntsville with the Coachella Valley, by three attributes: the percentage of the local population with Bachelor’s degrees or Graduate/Professional degrees, and by ratio of Professional/Scientific/Tech Services businesses to all local businesses. For comparison, we have also included the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale MSA, an economy that shares similar climate constraints to the Coachella Valley. Note that the Coachella Valley has a significantly lower number of residents with bachelor’s degrees, and is below all the averages for Graduate/Professional Degrees. And while the Professional/Scientific/Tech sector is not a huge player in any of the comparative economies, we still are below each comparative location.

Source: Esri Business Analyst 2018