Miami’s slate of professional services workers, including in hot tech sector, soars to record number
The pandemic continues to remake the U.S. economy in numerous ways. And Greater Miami, which has witnessed an unprecedented influx of wealth and highly educated professionals to its environs, is among the regions seeing the most acute changes.
I’ve previously covered the shortfall in realizing some of the lofty hiring goals of the city’s newly arrived technology firms. Some of the local hiring gap may be explained by a disconnect between the needs of these firms and their ability — or willingness — to look to Miami-grown talent, with some of the companies apparently favoring professionals working remotely in other states.
Now, new data show Miami’s transition to a more advanced economy — a goal long discussed among city and county leaders — is underway.
The number of workers employed in professional and business services in the area of Miami, Miami Beach and Kendall, a geographical subset defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, totaled more than 196,000 in November — an all-time high for that sector and above pre-pandemic levels. Occupations in professional and business services include lawyers, accountants — and computer workers.
In fact, the category’s professional, scientific and technical sub-sector has seen exponential growth since the fall of 2020. In August, the number working in this smaller group surpassed 100,000, and now totals more than 104,000, according to the BLS data.
This does not mean Miami now has 100,000 tech workers. According to quarterly occupation data published by the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, the number of “computer systems design and related services” roles was about 8,800 at the end of the second quarter of 2021, the most recent period for which data were available. That’s a hiring increase from about 8,500 workers in the first quarter of 2021, and 8,300 in 2020.
If Miami’s economic advancement is rapidly accelerating, it still has a ways to go to eclipse old regimes. In Greater Miami, trade, warehouse workers and utilities sector, which includes retail workers, remains the area’s largest employment division, with 291,000 workers, according to the BLS data.
But professional services workers have outnumbered retail employees since 2012, and the professional, scientific, technical sub-sector is now only 30,000 jobs behind retail.
The growth among white-collar workers in South Florida appears to be confined to Miami-Dade County, suggesting it’s related to the tech expansion that began in the beginning of 2021. In an email, Ned Murray, associate director of the Jorge M. Pérez Metropolitan Center at Florida International University, said that Broward and Palm Beach counties are seeing nowhere near the increases Miami-Dade has seen in its professional ranks.
While the trends are clear, the details are not. Murray said that until it’s determined which of the professional sector’s businesses are growing and hiring, it will be difficult to assess what effect the trend is having.
“Certainly, the average wage in professional, scientific, and technical services is much higher,” he said, “but we don’t know which occupations are growing, where the workers are coming from, and what percentage of these workers are contract or gig workers working remotely from somewhere in the U.S.”
Some locals are getting hired by technology companies, if Kevin Amézaga is any indication. A 19-year-old coder, Amézaga was recently hired by new Miami-based tech firm Openstore as an information technology engineer after months of languishing in the job search wilderness.
But Amézaga said many locals are now competing with remote workers that Miami tech firms are hiring.
“The issue isn’t just Miami firms not hiring Miami workers, but the remote opportunities are forcing Miami tech workers to compete against a national workforce with experience that we don’t have access to here,” Amézaga said. “I got lucky, but I’m sure there are plenty of others that probably haven’t gotten so lucky.”
This story was originally published January 2, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
