Tech jobs rolling along as sector unemployment falls

For all the doom and gloom surrounding the economy, the tech jobs market rebounded in June, dropping the sector’s unemployment rate as postings bumped up slightly.

That’s according to CompTIA’s monthly analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, which shows that tech unemployment has been consistently lower than the national rate, which is currently 4.1%. But in recent months tech numbers had been ticking up—to 3.4% in May—making the drop to 2.8% in June noticeable.

Hire, robot. For all the warnings of job loss for the white-collar workforce because of AI, including recent comments from CEOs, the reality tells a slightly different story. Tim Herbert, CompTIA chief research officer, said in a statement accompanying the numbers that the employment data “showed surprising strength for the month given recent expectations.”

That includes the perception that AI is driving the sector; as Herbert noted, the data tells a more complicated story—though CompTIA’s analysis did show job listings including AI skills continuing to skyrocket.

“It’s worth pointing out there is more to tech hiring than AI,” Herbert said. “The data continues to confirm employer hiring activity across many tech talent domains.”

Charting a course. Somewhat paradoxically, most of the tech subsectors CompTIA monitors showed declines in their employment numbers. Only telecommunications registered an uptick of 800 positions; the remaining numbers showed sharp declines. Notably, PC, semiconductor, and components manufacturing dropped 4,900 jobs, IT and custom software services and system design saw a reduction of 2,500 positions, and general search services fell by 1,000.

Postings were more robust with increases in cybersecurity engineer and analyst positions (1,653), network engineer and architect (530), and tech support specialist (405). The top three states for job postings increases were Georgia, adding 875 from May, New York, up 750, and Washington, DC, with 611 more from last month. Washington also led the top five for metro area increases at 1,386, followed by San Francisco at 924, New York at 565, Atlanta with 561, and Baltimore at 532.