U.S. technology employment is moving in the right direction as both tech firms and the IT industry added jobs in October, according to technology trade organization CompTIA.
Citing the monthly U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CompTIA said the country’s technology sector added an estimated 14,200 jobs last month, including technical and non-technical positions at U.S. tech firms.
October marks the third out of the last four months that the tech sector has seen employment growth.
For the IT industry, gains were even larger, as the industry added an estimated 142,000 jobs in October. That brings the IT unemployment rate down to 2.8% from 3.5% in September. That’s far lower than the U.S. total unemployment rate of 6.9%.
The 14,200 additional job postings in October increased the total number of IT jobs available to 239,000, according to CompTIA.
“It is reassuring to see consistency in this month’s data with all four metrics pointing to momentum in tech employment,” said Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA.
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IT services and custom software development led the way with the addition of 15,800 jobs, followed by 3,500 new jobs in tech manufacturing, and 800 new jobs in data processing, hosting and related services.
Total IT job postings last month were led by application developers at 72,100, IT support specialists at 22,000, system engineers and architects at 18,800, system analysts at 14,800 and IT project managers at 14,000.
The IT industry continues to be receptive to remote work possibilities, as 23% of IT job postings indicated that remote work was an option. That’s in line with the 2020 average of 22%.
Other findings from CompTIA’s analysis of the job data:
- Demand for tech talent continues to be broad-based with employers across industry sectors in hiring mode, led by professional scientific and technical services (41,252) finance and insurance (20,549), manufacturing (18,027) and information (13,644).
- Washington, D.C. (17,414), New York (14,036), Dallas (10,958), San Francisco (10,306) and Los Angeles (9,169) were the top five metropolitan areas with the largest numbers of IT job postings in October.
- Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas and Washington recorded the best month over month gains in job postings.
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