Giving Compass' Take:

• Mark Muro, at Brookings, discusses how extreme tech-based growth in five coastal cities casts a shadow on employment in the rest of the nation.

• With technology making up such a large portion of employment, what can we do to support growth in other areas? How can we support those who've been left unemployed in recent developments?

• Learn more about how technology's beneficiaries can make a positive impact.

In December, Brookings Metro and Robert Atkinson of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation released a report noting that 90% of the nation’s innovation sector employment growth in the last 15 years was generated in just five major coastal cities: Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, San Diego, and San Jose, Calif.

Sure, dozens of snappy startups are launching in places like Akron, Ohio, Memphis, Tenn., and Louisville, Ky.—enough so that metro areas across America have added tech jobs since 2010. But even so, digital tech by our measure has continued to concentrate in a short list of major cities over the decade, rather than disperse outwards. As such, many metro areas are losing their shares of the overall tech sector even as they grow.

But that’s just the surface story. Deeper analysis of tech’s shifting structure clearly shows that although more cities are enjoying a mathematical rise in the number of tech jobs, the sector has been rapidly concentrating all decade. This dynamic may reflect the rising importance of giant agglomerations of talent and firms in periods of tech disruption, as with the decade’s waves of social media and artificial intelligence innovation. It might reflect the continued groupthink of tech industry managers and funders about siting decisions. Or, it might reflect the geographic effect of monopolistic “platforms” in Big Tech, which may prevent the entry of geographical as well as corporate rivals.

What is increasingly clear, though, is that tech-based growth will likely not diffuse out into America’s up-and-coming midsized cities and small towns on its own. Instead, it’s going to take tougher action from a concerned nation to counter this excessive concentration and spark new vitality across the heartland.

Read the full article about tech-based growth in coastal cities by Mark Muro at Brookings.