Geek city: 1 in 5 Seattle residents work in STEM fields, top in U.S.
New census data shows that the number of Seattleites employed in STEM fields has more than doubled over the past decade, hitting almost 89,700 in 2019. STEM workers now make up 19% of the roughly 470,000 employed Seattle residents. Nearly half (48%) of those STEM workers are software developers. Seattle ranks No. 1 overall for the percentage of residents working in STEM fields, out of 98 U.S. cities that the Census Bureau tabulated detailed 2019 occupational data for.