AI jobs drove August numbers

A stronger-than-expected jobs market in August didn’t translate into an employment boom for the tech sector, but the news is a little more complicated than simply “good” or “bad,” with AI continuing to impact the industry’s dynamics.

According to a CompTIA analysis of Bureau of Labor and Statistics data, companies across all industry sectors added 86,000 tech jobs in August, even as tech companies reduced headcount by 14,700 positions.

There were 600,000 technology occupation postings in August, 42% of which were for new positions, and—importantly—320,000 open AI positions, marking a 4.5% increase from July’s AI job count. That’s a sign of the continued strength of the AI subsector.

As the Economist noted in a September 4 article about the impact of AI on hiring, predictions that the technology would result in a “jobs apocalypse” have thus far been unfounded, despite some employment disruption due to AI; the magazine estimates the technology may have helped create 1 million jobs in the US since 2023, including engineers and data annotators.

A mid-August report from DataCamp projects that the rise of AI-driven employment will continue, leading to a net increase of 78 million roles (170 million new roles minus 92 million roles displaced) by 2030.

The report analyzed 2 million job postings, finding a sharp 80% year over year rise between in Q1 of this year. Developers saw gains not only in positions but also in salary, reportedly due to AI requiring accelerated tech-stack buildouts: “One possible factor behind these high growth values is that an AI focus might push companies to hire for building the foundational pipelines required to support AI systems.”