New York Now Holds 394,300 Tech Jobs and Just Passed the Bay Area for the First Time

CNBC reports that New York's 394,300 tech talent jobs have edged out the San Francisco Bay Area's 375,730, the first time New York has taken the lead in the 13 years CBRE has run the analysis. The report covers tech-specific workers across 75 metropolitan markets in the US and Canada. At Metaintro, we read geographic shifts like this as hiring signals rather than city rivalries, and the useful detail is not that New York won. It is who did the hiring and what they now expect from the people they hire.

Why did New York overtake the Bay Area?

Two movements in opposite directions rather than one. The executive director of CBRE's Tech Insights Center described it as cuts in the Bay Area contracting the size of the tech talent workforce, while the finance sector in New York hired a lot of tech talent and a lot of AI workers. The lead was produced as much by contraction on one coast as by growth on the other.

That distinction changes what a job seeker should conclude. If New York had simply grown faster, the advice would be to follow the growth. What actually happened is that a different industry became the buyer of technical labour. The employer hiring engineers in New York is more likely to be a bank or an asset manager than a software company, and that changes the interview, the culture, the compensation structure and the career ladder. Metaintro has tracked the same movement from the finance side in the AI skill jobs banks posted while finance payrolls fell, which is the mirror image of this report.

How fast are AI roles actually growing?

Faster than the tech workforce as a whole, and the gap is wide. AI tech roles grew by 45% across the US and Canada in the past year, and as of June there were 751,000 AI-related workers across the two countries. San Francisco and New York each added more than 20,000 AI-specific jobs since mid-2025. Those totals include both newly created jobs and conversions from existing jobs, which is an important qualifier. A meaningful share of that growth is existing staff being redefined rather than new headcount appearing.

The share of the market these roles now represent is the number worth remembering. AI-related roles account for nearly one third of all tech-talent job listings in the US. For anyone applying to technical roles, that means the probability of encountering AI requirements in a job description is no longer a specialist concern. Geographically the concentration is heavy, with 37% of US AI jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Seattle and Washington. Canada is more concentrated still, with 60% of AI jobs based in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Does this mean the Bay Area is finished?

No, and the report is careful about this in a way that headlines will not be. While New York leads in overall tech talent, San Francisco still leads in AI specifically. What New York won is the total count, not the frontier. That distinction is easy to lose in a headline and expensive to act on, because a worker who relocates for a ranking may arrive in the market with more jobs but fewer of the specific jobs they wanted. If your goal is to work at the leading edge of AI research and product, the concentration argument still points west.

The Bay Area's office market tells the same story from another angle. AI companies made up 58% of all leasing in San Francisco in the first half of this year, and have accounted for 30% of leasing activity, totalling about 10 million square feet, since 2023. That is a market being rebuilt around one industry rather than one in decline. The pandemic pushed many tech workers into remote jobs and weakened the office market, but AI has a more office-centric culture and is now fuelling the recovery.

What does the return to office look like in AI jobs?

Considerably more demanding than the hybrid norms most tech workers got used to, and this is the part of the report with the most direct effect on daily life. The CBRE executive described the pattern as people being in the office "[a] minimum of four, but usually like five or six days a week", attributing it to a startup innovation culture where "being together and working in person is just much more efficient and innovative".

Anyone weighing an AI role should price that in before comparing salaries. A five or six day in-office expectation reshapes commuting costs, childcare arrangements, housing choices and the value of a headline salary in an expensive city. It is also a term that is often negotiable at the margins even when pay is not, which is worth knowing before you accept. Metaintro's guide to seven things you can negotiate when the salary will not move is a useful checklist for that conversation, and the salary you need to buy a home and the jobs that pay it is the sharper test of whether a big-city offer actually clears.

Is AI adding jobs or removing them?

On this evidence, adding, though with a caveat the report itself supplies. There was concern that AI would reduce head counts and consequently the need for office space, but in the short term at least that has not been the case. The CBRE executive was direct about it, saying AI "basically changes jobs and creates new jobs, more so than it eliminates", pointing specifically to the finance sector.

Two words in that assessment deserve weight. The first is "changes", which matches the finding that the AI worker total includes conversions from existing jobs rather than only new posts. Many of these are the same people doing reorganised work. The second is "short term", which is the analyst's own hedge. A commercial real estate report measures leasing and headcount today, not the trajectory of a technology. It is fair evidence that AI has not yet produced net job destruction in these markets, and it is not evidence about what happens next. Metaintro has covered the slower version of that pressure in how AI is shrinking millions of jobs rather than eliminating them and in the access gap facing junior staff.

What does this mean for tech workers outside North America?

The report itself is a North American document, covering 75 metropolitan markets across the US and Canada, so the direct answer is that it does not measure you. The indirect answer is more useful, because the buying behaviour it describes sets what international employers and clients will ask for next.

Start with the concentration. In the US, 37% of AI jobs sit in just four markets, and in Canada 60% of AI employment is in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Employers are clustering this work tightly and pairing it with an office expectation of four to six days a week. Those two facts together tell a worker in Bengaluru, Warsaw or Lagos something specific. The roles being concentrated and made office-bound are the frontier product roles. They are the least likely to be filled remotely from another continent, precisely because the employers involved believe proximity is what makes them work.

What travels is the other category the report describes, the conversions. A large share of the 751,000 AI-related workers reached those roles by having existing jobs redefined rather than by relocating into a hub. That path is available anywhere, and it does not depend on being in a market CBRE counts. The practical implication for workers outside North America is to stop treating a hub move as the goal and start treating domain plus AI capability as the asset. Metaintro has covered how that combination holds up under pressure in what to check before taking a job with an AI title and in why front line workers want transparency about how the tools are used.

There is one more signal worth reading. AI-related roles are now nearly a third of US tech-talent listings, which means the requirement is becoming standard rather than specialist in the market that most influences global job descriptions. Wherever you work, expect that language to arrive in local postings within a year or two.

Should you move for a tech job right now?

Only with a clear reason, because the geography is less decisive than the numbers suggest. The two leading markets sit close together in absolute terms, which is a narrow gap in a combined market of that size. Between them, plus Seattle and Washington, they account for 37% of US AI jobs, which also means the majority of AI jobs are somewhere else. A move justified purely by a market ranking is a weak move. Rankings also lag. This one measures where workers already are, counted across 75 markets, which is a record of hiring decisions taken over the preceding year rather than a forecast of the next one. By the time a shift is large enough to change the order of a league table, the hiring that produced it has already happened, and the roles have been filled.

There are two stronger reasons. The first is sector fit. If your background is finance, insurance or regulated data work, New York's hiring pattern is now aligned with your experience in a way it was not before, and that is a genuine argument for the city. The second is stage fit. If you want frontier AI product work and thrive in an in-person, high-intensity environment, San Francisco still leads in AI and the office culture described in this report will suit rather than frustrate you. Outside those cases, the better play is usually to build the AI-adjacent experience where you are, then move with an offer rather than in hope. Metaintro has seen how costly the alternative can be in the Starbucks relocation that put Seattle jobs on the line and in Samsung's move to Texas.

What does this mean for your career?

The most useful takeaway has nothing to do with either city. It is that AI-related roles now make up nearly a third of US tech-talent listings, and that a large share of the 751,000 AI-related workers got there by conversion rather than by being hired into a new job. The realistic route into this work is to convert your current role, not to compete as an outsider for a scarce new one. That means finding the AI-adjacent work inside your existing job, volunteering for the pilot, and building a record before you need it.

The second takeaway is for anyone in finance or an adjacent regulated industry. When the CBRE analyst pointed to finance as the sector where AI changes and creates jobs, he described an opening for people who understand a domain and can work with technical teams inside it. Those hybrid roles are frequently easier to enter than pure engineering positions and they are harder to fill, because domain knowledge cannot be acquired in a bootcamp. If you have spent years learning how a business actually works, that is now the scarce half of the pairing. Metaintro tracked a version of this in what to ask before taking a job with an AI title, where the roles worth having were the ones with a real function underneath the label.

Related Articles

• Target Adds a Chief AI Officer to a 2 Billion Dollar Turnaround
• Chase Closes Another Wave of Branches and Bank Jobs Shift
• OpenAI's 30 Billion Dollar Georgia Data Center and the Jobs It Will Create
• Microsoft Puts a Spending Cap on How Much AI Its Engineers Can Use
• AI Labs Are Hiring Away the Professors and Closing the Research
• Managing AI Agents Is Becoming Its Own Job and Its Own Burnout
• SpaceX Job Listings Point to a Major AI Build and the Roles It Needs Now
• 630 Jobs Gone at Monday.com as a 20% Cut Funds Its AI Bet
• Boeing's Contract Rejection and What It Means for Engineering Pay
• SpaceX's First Earnings Since the IPO and the AI Hiring Signal
• Botsitting Costs Workers Hours a Week, What to Do About It
• One Company Let Candidates Use AI in Interviews and Says Hiring Got Better

People Also Asked

Q: How many tech jobs does New York have compared with San Francisco?

A: New York has 394,300 tech talent jobs against the San Francisco Bay Area's 375,730, according to CBRE's analysis of 75 metropolitan markets across the US and Canada. It is the first time New York has led in the 13 years the report has been produced. San Francisco still leads specifically in AI roles.

Q: How fast are AI jobs growing?

A: AI tech roles grew 45% across the US and Canada in the past year, reaching 751,000 AI-related workers as of June. San Francisco and New York each added more than 20,000 AI-specific jobs since mid-2025. Those figures include conversions from existing jobs as well as newly created ones.

Q: Do AI jobs require working in the office?

A: Frequently yes, and more than recent tech norms. CBRE describes AI workplaces as office-centric, with staff in the office a minimum of four and usually five or six days a week. AI companies made up 58% of all San Francisco leasing in the first half of this year, which reflects that demand for physical space.

Whether the work is in New York, the Bay Area or neither, the roles worth taking are the ones with a real function behind the AI label. Metaintro surfaces verified openings from employers who are hiring now, including the finance and domain-heavy technical roles driving this shift. Create a free profile to see which ones line up with the experience you already have.