Tech Hiring Rises Across Economy While Tech Sector Employment Slips

The volume of tech jobs throughout the economy grew, while hiring by technology companies took a small step back in May, according to an analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics by CompTIA, a suburban Chicago-based trade association.

Tech sector companies reduced headcount by 4,725 jobs last month, representing less than a fraction of a percent (0.1%) of the industry’s total workforce. Among the six top level tech sector occupation categories three show positive gains for the year, led by IT services and custom software development (+10,200 year-to-date), the cloud infrastructure, data processing and hosting category (+2,300) and tech manufacturing (+1,100).

Tech occupations across the economy increased by 45,000 jobs. The unemployment rate for tech occupations decreased slightly from 2.1% to 2.0% and remains well below the national figure of 3.7%.

“Reassuringly the positives for the month outweigh the negatives, confirming the tech workforce remains on solid footing,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer, CompTIA.

Employer job postings for future tech hiring eased last month but still totaled nearly 234,000. Top positions sought by companies include software developers and engineers, IT project managers, data analysts and IT support specialists. About one in five job postings are for positions in emerging technologies or in jobs that require emerging tech skills, including nearly 15,000 openings involved with artificial intelligence.

Channel Impact^®
Despite slippage within the tech sector, the growth of tech jobs in the broad market will be seen as positive news by the channel.