Tech jobs hold steady for October amid national disruption

Tech employment stayed steady in October as the overall national economy saw fluctuations from labor unrest and severe weather, a CompTIA analysis showed.

At 2.6%, October’s tech unemployment was virtually the same as September’s 2.5%, a strong showing that indicates the ongoing strength of the sector labor market. Also holding steady was the national unemployment rate, at 4.1%.

Tim Herbert, CompTIA chief research officer, said in a statement accompanying the report that the tech numbers reflect a number of positives on the tech employment front.

“The data indicates employers continue a balanced approach to hiring across core tech job roles and innovation enabling roles,” Herbert added.

Just breathe. October storms affecting the Southeast tech sector didn’t appear to affect the overall numbers in CompTIA’s analysis. But the US Bureau of Labor Statistics included the weather as a factor in the national economic picture. The agency also cited strikes as determinative to the findings—though experts like NerdWallet Senior Economist Elizabeth Renter were skeptical of seeing those concerns as indicative of the overall health of the labor market.

“The news doesn’t warrant panic about overall economic health,” Renter told CNN.

Tech jobs in the economy bumped up by 70,000 positions over the month even as the sector overall shed a little over 4,000 workers. Still, postings continued to grow as an increase in listings of nearly 223,000 fueled a total 528,402 open positions, up from September’s 516,000.

Given to fly. Eric Johnson, PagerDuty CIO, told CIO Dive that tech modernization is pushing the need for workers. Employers are “competing with a lot of companies that are out there trying to drive and transform their businesses and move them forward,” he added.

“There’s a whole new set of skills that we just don’t have enough people for,” Johnson said.