Report: Tech jobs are growing faster in KC than across US; why that workforce win requires action

A new report shows Kansas City’s tech job postings are growing nearly five times faster than the national average, said Kara Lowe, noting the real headline isn’t just in the numbers, it’s in what Kansas City does with them next.

Released this week, KC Tech Council’s annual, data-driven KC Tech Specs analysis indicates Kansas City’s demand for technology talent is accelerating, but that’s just part of the story within a $13.1 billion regional tech economy where employers are eager to seize opportunities to better connect job openings to available talent, said Lowe.

“When we started Tech Specs, a lot of the workforce conversation was about quantity. How many tech workers do we have, how many jobs are open, and are we producing enough talent?” the president and CEO of KC Tech Council (KCTC) told Startland News. “Eight reporting cycles later, our understanding is much more nuanced. We’ve learned that the challenge isn’t simply whether Kansas City has enough people interested in tech careers, it’s how effectively talent, skills and opportunities connect to fill our open jobs.”

RELATED: KC Tech Council earns $4M Kauffman grant to bring KC TechBridge vision to life

Kansas City already has meaningful scale within its workforce, according to the KC Tech Specs v.09 report. The region boasts about 75,000 net tech workers, representing 6.5% of the workforce, and about 7% of the regional economy.

“The data has helped us see tech less as a standalone sector and more as a workforce that cuts across nearly every major industry in Kansas City,” Lowe said. “At the same time, we’re seeing important shifts in roles employers are hiring. For example, management roles represented 22% of KC tech postings in 2024, compared with 13% in 2019. Those kinds of changes tell us we have to pay attention not just to the size of the workforce, but to where opportunity exists and whether our talent systems are keeping pace.”

Why it matters: Turning growing demand into more high-value careers strengthens both the region’s talent base and its broader economy, she emphasized.

The new report not only points to where Kansas City is gaining ground, Lowe said, it shows where the region needs to compete harder.

“Tech Specs has increasingly moved from being a report card to being a roadmap,” she explained. “That evolution is a big part of what led us to KC TechBridge.”’

The KC Tech Council team: Zach Gredlics, Kara Lowe, Christine Murray, and Erin Christensen; photo courtesy of the KC Tech Council

Click here to learn more about KCTC’s KC TechBridge initiative, which includes plans to establish a Technology Hiring Center of Excellence to build shared employer capability for tech companies across the region.

“The data tells us there are increasing opportunities in the market, outpacing the national average, while employers continued to report difficulty finding talent and candidates continued to report difficulty getting hired,” she continued. “That disconnect pushed us beyond simply asking how we create more talent and toward examining how employers define jobs, assess skills, source candidates and make hiring decisions. TechBridge is really the action layer on top of what years of Tech Specs data, combined with what we hear directly from employers and talent, have been telling us.”

Want to dig deeper into what the Tech Specs data means for your organization? Schedule a KC Tech Specs presentation for a closer look at the findings, trends, and opportunities shaping Kansas City’s tech economy.