High Technology: High Tech Gets High Grades, Top Dollar in Four Northwest States
High tech is raining prosperity down on the region.</br></br>That's according to the fourth edition of the American Electronics Association's "Cyberstates: A State-by-State Overview of the High-Technology Industry." The report, which is being released today, takes a number of different measures of the region's high-tech industry -- including its employment, wages and share of exports -- and compares them with those of other states as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. The report, funded in part by the Nasdaq Stock Market, also provides an analysis of both high-tech venture-capital investments and research-and-development expenditures.</br></br>The association defines high-tech using three broad categories: manufacturing, communications services, and software and computer-related services. This definition doesn't include such fields as biotechnology or aerospace.</br></br>High-tech employees in Washington state were the best paid around as of 1998, earning an average annual salary of $105,681 -- almost twice the U.S. average of $57,701. And it's more than three times the state's average private-sector wage of $32,914. Dick Conway, a Seattle economist who tracks regional business issues, attributes that to the high stock-option income at Microsoft Corp. (Puerto Rico had the lowest high-tech wage at $24,169.) By comparison, the average high-tech wage in Oregon was $54,771, ranking the state fifth.</br></br>But in another measure, the Evergreen State ranked far lower than one might expect: 45th in its share of high-tech exports. Again, Microsoft is the culprit, says Mr. Conway, because the software the Redmond-based company sells often doesn't get counted as merchandise by the U.S. Census Bureau, but rather as a service that requires a license to operate.