New York City now has the most tech jobs of any market in the country, edging the San Francisco Bay Area for the first time in an annual survey.

Commercial real estate firm CBRE ranked New York at the top with 394,300 tech jobs, compared with the Bay Area’s 375,730. It’s the first time New York has come out on top in the 13 years of the “Scoring Tech Talent” report, which tracks tech staffing in 75 markets in the U.S. and Canada.

Significant layoffs by companies in Silicon Valley and San Francisco played a role in the reversal in the rankings, with New York companies in the finance and AI sectors bulking up their staffs.

A paradox lies at the heart of the findings: While AI has been cited by top execs at major tech firms as a reason for their cutbacks, the dynamic expansion of AI has been fueled by hundreds of billions in spending. That has led to an array of new ways for tech talent to find work. New York has pulled into the lead in part because many AI jobs require full-time in-person commitments, and the city has been on a drive to restore commercial occupancy since the all-time low period of Covid.

“Fully remote arrangements for new roles declined as employers moved to hybrid schedules of three or more days in the office,” the report said. “AI companies largely require full-time, in-person work. In the San Francisco Bay Area, remote job postings fell to 7% as of April 2026 from 24% in mid-2022, well below the current 18% share across all U.S. tech talent postings.”

Despite widespread layoffs at Meta, Amazon, Google and other tech giants, total tech employment grew by 1.8%, adding 108,760 jobs last year. AI roles accounted for the majority of those gains, with the sector growing by 45% over the past year. San Francisco and New York each added more than 20,000 AI-oriented jobs in that span, CBRE said.

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