Tech Sub Categories

Employment concentration ratios help illustrate how strongly an industry is represented within a regional economy. Values greater than 1.00 indicate that the industry is more concentrated locally than the national average and represents a significant part of a state’s economic base. Industries with high concentration often drive a region’s exports and wealth creation. Overall, the share of workers in North Carolina’s tech industry is comparable to the national average. In life sciences and IT, the state has higher concentrations.

The IT subcategory accounts for 54 percent of the jobs in the tech industry. Job growth has been strong in all subcategories except for environmental technology. The job decline in the environmental technology sector is heavily influenced by a reclassification of jobs rather than a true decline in workers. From 2021 to 2022, more than 4,900 jobs in Durham County from the Instruments for Measuring, Displaying, and Controlling Industrial Processes industry were reclassified to the corporate offices industry (outside of the tech industry). The BLS reclassifies companies often to ensure their code is most in line with the activity of the business. One-year growth in this subsector has since been strong, and overall, the tech industry has been adding jobs at high levels.