Ithaca leads New York with an eye-catching score of 51.3, likely attributed to Cornell University and Ithaca College being the city’s largest employers. Universities are leaders in the digitalization of the workforce, and college towns from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Boulder, Colorado, earned Silicon Valley-level scores.
Next on the list is the Albany-Schenectady-Troy region with a score of 49.5. State capitals tend to outpace other cities when it comes to digitalization. Nearby Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Trenton, New Jersey, for example, are both above average for their states.
That holds true on the national level too; government bureaucracy is emblematic of the rapid transformation to digital technology, especially at the Department of Defense and its many contractors.
Brookings data shows that the more digital skills a job requires, the more it pays. The average salary for high-digital skill jobs is about $79,000, compared with $35,000 for jobs with low digital skills and $54,000 for occupations that require medium digital skills.
“People with more digital skills see greater mobility and pay,” said Mark Muro, a Brookings senior fellow. “The overall digital skill level of people, firms and place is strongly associated with increased productivity and pay.”
Two decades ago fewer than 10% of jobs were highly digitalized—or requiring a high knowledge of computers and electronics, the Washington-based think tank said. By last year it was more than 25%. At the opposite end of spectrum, roughly half of all jobs had low digital content in 2002, Brookings said. By 2022 it was just under one-quarter of all jobs.
Coming out of a pandemic that has severed the link between work and traditional workplaces for many workers, digitalization of jobs has even greater implications for the economies of individual states and cities. Fewer than 1% of low-digital jobs can be done from home. About three-fourths of highly digital jobs can be done remotely.