Philadelphia's AI job market grows but still not top 10

Data: UMD-LinkUp AIMaps; Note: "AI job" is defined as a job requiring technical skills to build and/or use AI models. A bigger circle indicates more new jobs per capita. Map: Kavya Beheraj/Axios

Philadelphia's market for artificial intelligence jobs is heating up, but we're still not close to becoming one of the nation's top 10 hotspots .

Why it matters: As AI emerges as the hottest new thing in tech, cities outside Silicon Valley can get in on the action — and reap the potentially lucrative economic rewards, Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick and Kavya Beheraj write.

By the numbers: In the year's first quarter, the Philly region had 9.3 new AI jobs per 100,000 residents — or below the national rate.

• There were 579 AI jobs posted in that period, 2,200 fewer than posted by AI leader San Jose, California, in the same period.

Yes, but: The AI job market is growing in the region.

• While the 2,408 AI jobs made up less than a percent of the more than 329,000 new jobs in the Philly region last year, that's nearly 1,000 more than in 2018.

Zoom out: After San Jose, which had 142 new AI jobs per 100,000, Seattle (74.4) and San Francisco (49.3) rounded out the top three in the first quarter of the year among cities with at least 500,000 residents and 25 newly posted jobs.

• In those cities, AI jobs accounted for 7.5% of all new job listings in San Jose, 4% in Seattle, and 3.2% in San Francisco.
• For comparison, 11.7 AI-related jobs were posted for every 100,000 residents nationally in Q1.

How it works: The estimates are provided by UMD-LinkUp , a collaboration between the University of Maryland, job listings platform LinkUp, and consultancy/executive firm Outrigger Group.

The bottom line: While much of America's AI workforce is concentrated in Silicon Valley, other areas — notably Texas and the Washington, D.C., metro — are emerging as second-tier solid contenders.