Massachusetts is one the country’s main leaders in the high-tech job industry, according to a 2012 study from the National Science Foundation.
The NSF ranked the Bay State sixth in a list of the states with the most high-tech business industries.
As of 2008, there were about 17,400 high-tech business industries in Massachusetts, which makes up about 10 percent of the state’s businesses. About 15 to 16 percent of all workers are in a science or engineering occupation – the second highest percentage in the entire country.
High-tech businesses are those where the percentages of employees working in “technology-oriented occupations” are at least twice that of the average percentage of technology-oriented workers in all businesses, according to the study.
Professor Randall Ellis, who teaches economics at Boston University, said he is not at all surprised by the state’s high ranking.
“High attention to quality education and the arts make Massachusetts very attractive to high-tech industries,” he said.
Alex Shuck, the marketing director of a high-tech iPhone/Android app company called SCVNGR and a BU Class of 2011 College of Communication alumnus, said the company is especially attracted to Massachusetts.
“The community in the Boston area is very innovative and active, where everyone’s helping each other out a lot,” Shuck said.
SCVNGR has branches all over the country, but they choose to have their headquarters in Cambridge for that reason, he said.
Ana Fioretti, a junior in BU’s College of Arts and Sciences, said she agreed that Massachusetts’s high ranking is predictable.
“Massachusetts has always been a big focal point to the United States,” Fioretti said. “When people think of the East Coast, they think of either Boston or New York, so it’s not really surprising that Massachusetts attracts so many high-tech businesses.”
Massachusetts’s high concentration of colleges may contribute to the state’s amount of high-tech industries, said Jaymin Desai, a freshman in BU’s School of Management.
“Schools around Boston like MIT and Harvard have some of the best technology, and so the technology keeps advancing in the area as time goes on,” she said.
Technology and progress go hand in hand, said Kaitlyn Falcone, an SMG freshman.
“Boston is a very innovative city with lots of business networking, so lots of technology is needed to propel these industries forward,” Falcone said.
High-tech industries might also help to satisfy the demands brought on by the sheer number of people and businesses in the Boston area, she said.
Massachusetts trailed Delaware, Colorado, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey in the rankings.
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