Tech job numbers show strong employment, tight labor market

Tech occupation unemployment fell to 1.8% in July, the lowest level since January—a sign of the sector’s continued strength.

That’s according to CompTIA’s analysis of the newest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In CompTIA’s report, released August 4, the IT training and certification organization noted that the volume of hiring, low unemployment rate, and number of open jobs is making for a tight labor market in the sector. “Given the pace of tech hiring, it remains a fairly tight market for tech talent,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA.

By the numbers. In July, tech companies hired 5,432 employees. Hiring was most robust for PC, semiconductor, and components manufacturing, telecommunications, and cloud infrastructure, data processing, and hosting. CompTIA also highlighted “under-the-radar” cities that are seeing tech employment growth: St. Louis, Jacksonville, Sacramento, and Las Vegas.

Total tech jobs across the economy increased by 65,000, and postings dropped to 204,400 from 236,000 in June. The jobs in highest demand? Software developers, IT project managers, support specialists, systems analysts and engineers, and data scientists—though the numbers for most of the top 10 careers were down month over month.

“Given the pace of tech hiring, it remains a fairly tight market for tech talent,” Tim Herbert, CompTIA chief research officer, said in a statement accompanying the findings. “It continues to be an environment where employers must supplement recruiting efforts with proactive talent development strategies.”

As we said. Given the positive state of the tech economy, it’s perhaps unsurprising that unemployment in the sector is down. As IT Brew reported in May, industry optimism is high, and bullish sentiment is holding steady. The integration of AI into systems management and operations has also led to a boost in fortunes for the industry.

Despite the good news, some companies are still cutting back. Notably, network operations giant Cisco laid off employees in July. And cybersecurity company Rapid7 let 18% of its workforce go this month.