Geographic Factors and Compensation for Jobs in Technology

Traditional compensation theory suggests that compensation will differ based on the geography of the job. The idea is that local factors such as cost-of-living and labor availability support the amount an employer should pay in order to meet demand for labor needs. One consideration is the nature of our rapidly changing workforce to more knowledge-based technology roles due to the impact technology is having on industry and society. Many technology jobs can be performed from varied locations and there is high demand for technology staff in industry. In other words, employees can complete their work from afar and employers may be willing to pay employees just as much in location X vs. location Y. I web scraped compensation data in an effort to determine if compensation for technology professionals differs in different locations. I also pair the data with local geographic information to determine if there are geographic features that drive/explain compensation for technology professionals.