According to CompTIA, the U.S. technology industry is trending up after a rough 2020, with employers adding 19,500 technology jobs in January, and IT jobs in all sectors of the economy grew by more than 78,000 as the unemployment rate for IT professionals fell to 2.4% from 3% the month prior.
CompTIA, citing the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, said in a press release that four of the five tech sector employment categories recorded job gains, marking the tech industry’s best January hiring month since 2017.
In a statement, Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA, said the figures suggest the technology sector is continuing its hiring momentum.
“On the occupation side, the data confirms the multi-faceted nature of employer tech talent needs with demand spanning software, artificial intelligence, infrastructure, IT support, security and more,” Herbert said.
According to CompTIA, January’s gains were led by the addition of 11,300 jobs in IT services and custom software development, which suggests growth in small and medium-size businesses.
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Other data in CompTIA’s report suggests companies are shoring up their IT departments as organizations adopt a permanently remote or hybrid workforce.
Another 6,000 new jobs were recorded in telecommunications, the strongest month for the sector since November 2017.
Job postings were also up for several technology categories. Job postings for core IT positions was over 232,000 nationwide in January, about 26,000 more than December.
Meanwhile, postings for software and app developers made up the largest share of job openings at 67,200. There were 21,000 postings for IT support specialists, 18,200 postings for systems engineers and architects, 16,000 postings for IT project managers and 15,200 postings for systems analysis.
Postings for jobs in emerging technologies or those requiring emerging tech skills also increased from 57,500 in December to almost 65,900 in January. Jobs in artificial intelligence accounted for nearly 15% of those, at 9,715.
Industries with most job postings for IT talent included professional, scientific and technical services (43,070), finance and insurance (20,353), manufacturing (18,341) and information (13,852).
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