Kern No. 9 Among Engineering Capitals
Kern County ranks 9th among "America's Engineering Capitals," according to Forbes.
In an article released Wednesday titled "America's Engineering Hubs: The Cities With The Greatest Capacity For Innovation," writer Joel Kotkin wrote,
When thinking of energy, we might think of wildcats covered with crude (like James Dean in Giant), but this is becoming an industry very dependent on highly trained geophysicists, petroleum engineers, chemical engineers and other specialists. This explains the ninth-place ranking for Bakersfield, "the oil capital of California," a city better known for country music and cruising than technology. Over 15,000 people work in this generally high-wage industry in the onetime Okie capital.
Kotkin found that in Kern County, there were 4,680 engineers. That translated to 17.1 engineers per 1,000 employees.
Forbes' Top Ten engineering capitals, and each one's number of engineers per 1,000 employees, are listed below; the Bakersfield/Delano metro area includes all of Kern County:
1) Silicon Valley/San Jose, Calif. (45.0)
2) Houston/Sugar Land/Baytown, Texas (22.4)
3) Wichita, Kan. (20.9)
4) Dayton, Ohio (20.8)
5) San Diego/Carlsbad/San Marcos, Calif. (20.2)
6) Greenville/Mauldin/Easley, S. C. (19.1)
7) Albuquerque (18.7)
8) Greater Boston area (17.5)
9) Bakersfield/Delano, Calif. (17.1)
10) Denver (17.0)
For the complete article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/07/31/americas-engineering-centers/