Fastest-growing cities for tech jobs

"Communities across the country are coming together to encourage startups, court big employers, and fund STEM education initiatives," notes Tom Silver, senior vice president of tech job site Dice.com. "So tech hubs are rapidly being redefined."

New York City, with 8,829 IT job postings on Dice in early March, still leads the pack -- partly due to Silicon Alley startups' ravenous appetite for tech talent, and partly because a wide range of other industries, from finance to publishing, need techies too. The Washington D.C.-Baltimore area comes in second (7,527 job postings), thanks to its huge concentration of defense contractors, trailed by third-place Silicon Valley (5,123). But the real surprises are in smaller cities most people don't think of as tech hubs at all. Here are the five fastest-growing metro areas for IT jobs.