London & Partners, the capital’s official promotional company and Stack Overflow, an online developer company have recently released figures that show London is attracting more tech businesses than any other major city in the world.
The analysis focused on users over the course of the past six months and shows that more than 71,000 professional developers have settled in London. This number is more than Berlin, Dublin and Stockholm combined!
Perhaps surprisingly, the figures also show that the UK capital is above San Francisco and New York, both global tech hubs in their own right. The next leading city in Europe, according to the analysis is Paris, which has 40,538 programmers in IT.
It has been predicted that the tech workforce in London will rise by 22% during the course of the next ten years. Oxford Economics estimates that by 2025 the tech workforce will rise to 239,700 with the actual number of tech companies rising to 51,500. Research also shows that London’s tech industry is predicted to increase by 6.4%.
Stack Overflow’s report states that, across the whole of Europe, London’s developers receive the highest salaries, with their average pay amounting to £56,830. The fact London is fast becoming a hothouse for tech talent has not gone unnoticed, with the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson stating: “The capital’s booming tech sector has gone from strength-to-strength and continues to be a leading source of jobs and growth for the London economy.”
London is home to some of the world’s leading universities, so it is perhaps unsurprising that more and more businesses are making London their home in order to gain access to the best talent. London is fast becoming a world-class tech hub and attracting more and more tech talent. This is something that David Slater, Director of International Trade & Investment recognises, he stated: “This research underlines London’s status as the best city in the world in which to grow a tech business”
He added: “In the past few years we have helped some of the world’s fastest growing technology companies establish headquarters and engineering centres in London.” With Stack Overflow’s data backing the idea that London will continue to grow as a tech hub, it remains to be seen whether the capital will continue to stay ahead of San Francisco!
London is, without a doubt, becoming more and more of an attractive place for tech firms to establish a base and the capital’s technology sector has certainly never looked so positive. With the tech sector now being the fastest growing area of the UK’s economy, the question is whether London will continue to surpass the world’s other major cities.