Tech jobs report shows mixed signals, but reasons to be hopeful for 2024

Though a recent tech-jobs report featured some month-to-month declines, a conversation with one of its contributors revealed some reasons to be optimistic.

Trade association CompTIA’s most recent jobs numbers for December featured encouraging data points: Tech-industry employment—in areas like semiconductor manufacturing, IT services, and cloud infrastructure—had its biggest spike since April, and employers are hiring for specialized skills as they begin to move on longer-term investments.

“If you’re thinking about it as a tech professional, or someone who is considering career pathways, tech is still a great bet. Because what’s the alternative? Most of the other categories are not going to grow at that rate,” Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA, told IT Brew.

CompTIA’s jobs report, meant as a complement to the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report, focuses solely on technology and features additional figures like job postings and unemployment rate. The CompTIA report also distinguishes between tech occupation employment and tech industry employment.

Findings from the monthly report showed a few declines in the usual categories. Tech occupations throughout the economy fell by 79,000 positions month over month. Unemployment for the tech sector increased to2.3%, and active job postings for tech positions dropped.

The IT sector grew by only 700 jobs in 2023, the WSJ reported.

But there are reasons to look up, IT pros:

• Tech-industry employment had its highest monthly growth rate since April, adding 12,922 new positions, CompTIA said.
• The monthly job increases were in tech industries like IT and custom software services (+8,500), cloud infrastructure/data processing (+4,400), and semiconductor and semiconductor component manufacturing (+1,600)
• And tech’s numbers look good, compared to everyone else. A separate CompTIA report from March 2023 cited a prediction from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Lightcast that the tech workforce would grow twice as fast as the overall US workforce over the next decade, and shared employment growth projections above the national rate for professions like data scientists, cybersecurity analysts, and software developers.
• The national unemployment rate currently sits at 3.7%—higher than tech’s 2.3%.

CIOs did plenty of speculating about a potential recession during 2023, Herbert said—the kind of thinking that can freeze a company from taking action.

“If you're a CIO, it's really tough to be requesting additional budget or additional headcount, when budgets across your organization are essentially frozen,” Herbert told us. “But you can only do that for so long. And at some point, you have to upgrade your equipment, you have to move beyond maintenance mode.”