The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the Web Development industry will grow 27% by 2024. In our daily lives, we all see and feel that growth happening, with new apps and online services popping up every day. It’s easy to assume that all of that growth is being powered from Silicon Valley, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

We can see exactly where web development is growing on a more granular level by analyzing thousands of individual job posts around the country. As a software school, we frequently talk to students who are curious about which cities are the best to start a web development career in. To help emphasize how much tech opportunity there is all around the United States, we put together this brief report.

The data consists of Indeed’s job listings within 25 miles of each of each listed major city, filtered by jobs listing “JavaScript” as a requisite skill. Thinkful’s Career Prep team has consistently used this as a reliable primary filter to detect web development jobs while also excluding low-level work sprucing up web pages.

Here are the Top 30 Cities to Start a Web Development Career — we were surprised by #1:

RankCity, StateJob Listings
1Washington, D.C. 824
2 New York, NY 751
3San Francisco, CA 587
4Seattle, WA 450
5Los Angeles, CA 313
6Chicago, IL 306
7Baltimore, MD 253
8Atlanta, GA 234
9Dallas, TX 234
10Austin, TX 211
11Philadelphia, PA 176
12San Diego, CA 164
13Denver, CO 163
14Orange County, CA 142
15Phoenix, AZ 133
16Minneapolis, MN 123
17Raleigh-Durham, NC 119
18Portland, OR 95
19Kansas City, MO 88
20Detroit, MI 87
21Columbus, OH 86
22Houston, TX 81
23Salt Lake City, UT 80
24Orlando, FL 79
25Pittsburgh, PA 79
26Tampa, FL 78
27Indianapolis, IN 67
28Charlotte, NC 65
29Milwaukee, WI 53
30St Louis, MO 51

As you can see, you definitely don’t need to be in Silicon Valley to get a job in tech. In fact, the vast majority of America’s jobs in web development are spread across the map, outside the traditional tech hubs. Even when we exclude the top 3 of Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco, there have been over 4,000 job postings looking for web developers in the last 30 days. Every company is rapidly becoming a tech company, so there’s a big demand for the skills needed to make that happen.




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