Tech hiring slows, outlier from strong jobs report

A strong jobs report for September didn’t translate to the tech sector, though unemployment in the industry is still below the national average.

That’s according to tech jobs numbers from a CompTIA report, which shows a lag in industry hiring and a drop in tech sector job postings for the month. CompTIA derives its numbers from Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. The technology sector has frequently been an outlier in jobs reports, but most often for outperforming the rest of the market according to CompTIA chief research officer Tim Herbert.

“Leading up to this year, throughout the pandemic, tech had a couple of off months,” Herbert told IT Brew. “But for the most part, it was actually growing all through the pandemic.”

While the unemployment rate in the sector, 2.2%, is far below the national average of 3.8%, hiring slipped in September. The industry as a whole lost a net 2,632 positions. To Herbert, that might mean a number of things, including restructuring after “the ramp-up we saw last year”—and he added that tech companies also may be “potentially scaling back on sales staff or customer service staff.”

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re laying off their top technical people, top programmers, data scientists, and so forth,” Herbert said.

Recruiters felt the crunch too, as tech job postings decreased to 184,077 in September from 208,000 in August. Software developers and engineers were the top positions in want ads in September, followed by IT project managers, data analysts, EmTech, IT support specialists, systems analysts and engineers, and data scientists. IT and software services led tech sector employment, while the PC and semiconductor manufacturing sector came in second; telecommunications and cloud services rounded out the top four.

State by state, California led the country in tech job listings, followed by Texas, Virginia, Florida, and New York. Washington, DC, led the nation’s cities in tech job postings, followed by New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

“There is a pretty stable base of employers here, especially when you think about all of the defense contractors, all of the big consulting firms,” Herbert said. “And it reflects the ongoing demand for cybersecurity that always shows up as a pretty significant component of hiring in the Washington, DC, region.”