Downers Grove, IL (Sept. 1, 2023) – Technology sector companies in the aggregate added workers for the month while employers throughout the economy reduced tech occupation staffing, analysis by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the information technology (IT) industry and workforce reveals.
Within the tech sector, employers increased employment by 12,643 positions, according to CompTIA’s analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics #JobsReport data. Employment growth was led by new hiring in IT and custom software services and systems design (+10,400) and cloud infrastructure, data processing and hosting (+5,800).
Tech occupations throughout the economy declined by 189,000 positions.1 The unemployment rate for tech occupations rose slightly to 2.1%, moving directionally with the increase in the national unemployment rate to 3.8%.
“The usual caveats of monthly fluctuations in labor market data apply,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. “The seesawing between strong and lagging tech jobs reports is undoubtedly confusing, but the overall macro trend of growth in the depth and breadth of the tech workforce remains steady.”
Employer job postings for future tech hiring totaled nearly 208,000 in August, a slight decline of 1.4% from the previous month.2 Job postings for information security analysts increased 19% from July to August, to more than 12,000 postings. Other in-demand occupations include software developers, tech support specialists, computer systems analysts and data scientists.
Denver, Washington, Phoenix, Tampa, Philadelphia and Baltimore led metropolitan areas with the largest increases in the number of tech job postings from July to August. Lansing, Michigan; Colorado Springs, Colorado, Denver, Tampa, Phoenix, Huntsville, Alabama; and San Diego saw notable increases on a percentage change basis.
By industry, employers in the professional, scientific and technical services, administrative support and manufacturing sectors has the largest share of tech job postings came from
Positions in emerging technologies or jobs requiring emerging tech skills accounted for 23% of all tech jobs postings in August. Within emerging tech job postings, 37% were associated with artificial intelligence (AI). California, Texas, New York, Massachusetts and Virginia had the highest numbers of AI-related job postings.
The “CompTIA Tech Jobs Report” is available here.
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About CompTIA
The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is the world’s leading information technology (IT) certification and training body. CompTIA is a mission-driven organization committed to unlocking the potential of every student, career changer or professional seeking to begin or advance in a technology career. Each year CompTIA, directly and through its global network of partners, provides millions of people with training, education and certification.
1 Monthly occupation level data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tends to experience higher levels of variance and volatility.
2 Labor market data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and employer job posting data from Lightcast may be subject to backward revisions.
