Technology employment continues to hold steady to begin the new year, according to analysis of the latest labor market day by CompTIA. CompTIA, is of course, the Downers Grove, Ill.-based nonprofit association for the information technology (IT) industry and workforce.
Tech industry companies added 17,600 workers in December, with job gains recorded in four of five sector categories, CompTIA’s analysis of today’s U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics #JobsReport reveals. It was the 25th straight month of net employment growth in the tech industry.
Employers throughout the economy added an estimated 130,000 tech workers in December, helping to drive down the tech occupations unemployment rate to 1.8%, compared to the overall national rate of 3.5%, according to CompTIA research.
Job postings for future tech hiring declined for the second consecutive month, but still totaled more than 246,000 in December. Positions for software developers and engineers accounted for nearly 30% of last month’s jobs postings. IT support specialists, IT project managers, systems engineers and network engineers were also in demand.
“Another wave of positive tech employment data speaks to the many moving parts of a complex labor market,” says Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. “Despite the layoffs there continues to be more employers hiring tech talent than shedding it.”
Washington, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Dallas led the list of metro markets with the highest volumes of tech jobs postings, which Richmond (Va.), Tallahassee (Fla.), Las Vegas (Nev.) and Lansing (Mich.) recorded the largest month-over-month increases in employer job postings. Among industry sectors, professional, scientific and technical services (38,654), finance and insurance (33,538) and manufacturing (26,763) reported the most activity.
CompTIA’s analysis also shows that 30% of all tech jobs postings are for positions in emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, or in roles requiring emerging tech skills.
Within the tech sector three occupation categories paced December hiring – IT services and custom software development (+7,200), other information services, including search engines (+6,600) and data processing, hosting and related services (+5,600).
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