Tech unemployment rate remains low at 2.2%
The up-and-down trends that have characterized technology employment throughout 2023 continued in September, analysis by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the information technology (IT) industry and workforce, reveals.
Tech sector companies reduced staffing by a net 2,632 positions last month, according to CompTIA’s analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics #JobsReport data. Tech occupations among all sectors across the economy fell by an estimated 20,000.1 At 2.2% the tech unemployment rate remains well below the national rate of 3.8%.
“There is no sugar-coating the off month of tech employment data,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer, CompTIA. “Despite the persistently high demand for tech skills on many fronts and positive forward-looking projections, there is a lag in hiring at the moment.”
Employer job postings for future tech hiring fell to 184,077 in September.2 Demand for software positions continues to drive the largest volume of hiring activity. In the aggregate volumes are equally large in positions spanning IT project management, IT support, data analytics and systems/cloud infrastructure.
Positions in emerging technologies or jobs requiring emerging tech skills accounted for 26.5% of all tech jobs postings last month, up from 22% in August. Within emerging tech job postings, 36% were associated with artificial intelligence (AI).
Employers in the professional, scientific and technical services, manufacturing, administrative support, finance and insurance and information sectors had the largest share of tech job postings. California, Texas and Virginia had the largest volumes of tech job postings at the state level, while Washington, New York City and Dallas led metro markets.
