Unless you've been living in a box, you know tech employment also decreased during the great recession. This article overviews some BLS data on which cities have the most tech jobs and which cities lost the least in 2009. Seattle was at the top of the list in keeping jobs, although tell that to the 5,000 Microsoft workers who were fired.

The report, based on data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, also showed that the New York metro area remained the largest industry employer, with 317,000 tech workers in 2009, the latest period for which the BLS has combined annual industry and metro area information.

Seattle, the home city of Microsoft and Amazon.com held onto its tech jobs at a time when 53 of the 60 largest U.S. cities shed workers in the sector.

The job losses ranged from 2% to 7% of total tech jobs in metro areas. Oakland was the worse, with a 7% total shedding of tech jobs.

Unfortunately the group who tabulated this data is the ITAA, one of our most notorious lobbyist groups pushing for more offshore outsourcing and guest worker Visas to labor arbitrage U.S. technical workers.