Tech companies reduced staffing by 4,725 jobs last month—or 0.1% of the industry’s total workforce, according to CompTIA's analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) latest jobs report. On the plus side, however, throughout the entire economy, tech occupations increased by 45,000 and the unemployment rate for tech workers fell to 2%.
Ups and Downs in Tech Jobs
Overall, tech jobs throughout the economy grew, while hiring by technology companies declined slightly in May, according to CompTIA's analysis. Among the six top-level tech sector occupation categories tracked by BLS, three showed 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%, the report said.
Silver Linings
“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 companies are looking to hire include software developers and engineers, IT project managers, data analysts and IT support specialists, according to the report. 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.
New York City, Washington, Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles led metropolitan markets in the highest volumes of tech job postings, the report found. Atlanta, Austin, St. Louis, San Jose and Phoenix also recorded the largest month-over-month increases in tech job postings. Among the states, New Jersey, Vermont, Kansas, Georgia and Arizona saw the biggest increases.
You can check out the entire CompTIA report here.
