CompTIA Analysis Shows Tech Sector Employment Growth Amid Larger Pullback in Tech Occupations in General
CompTIA's latest monthly Tech Jobs Report, this one showing August 2023 data, indicates technology sector companies in the aggregate added workers in August while employers throughout the economy reduced tech occupation staffing.
According to the report, within the tech sector, employers increased employment by 12,643 positions, as compared to July 2023 data. The report is based on CompTIA’s analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics #JobsReport data. The reports shows that month-over-month employment growth was led by new hiring in IT, custom software services and systems design (+10,400 positions) and cloud infrastructure, data processing and hosting (+5,800 positions).
In contrast, tech occupations throughout the US economy declined by 189,000 positions as compared to July 2023. The unemployment rate for tech occupations generally 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, MI, Colorado Springs, CO, Denver, Tampa, Phoenix, Huntsville, AL and San Diego saw notable increases on a percentage change basis.
In July 2023, the Salt Lake City metro area fell outside the top 10 in both total tech job postings and month-over-month increase in postings. The 2023 monthly tech job posting figures for the Salt Lake City metro market are:
- January: 1,016
- February: 1,146
- March: 1,060
- April: 1,078
- May: 1,047
- June: 1,201
- July: 1,100
- August: 930
By industry, employers in the professional, scientific and technical services, administrative support and manufacturing sectors has the largest share of tech job postings.
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.
CompTIA’s Tech Jobs Report is a monthly snapshot of information technology (IT) employment trending at the occupation and industry levels. CompTIA’s report coincides with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation (#JobsReport) monthly labor market release. CompTIA's analysis of the #JobsReport includes historical trending, employer hiring activity at the state and metro area level, unemployment rates, employer demand for emerging tech skills and more.
The “CompTIA Tech Jobs Report” is available at https://www.comptia.org/content/tech-jobs-report.
The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is the world’s leading information technology (IT) certification and training body. In December 2022, CompTIA acquired Pleasant Grove, Utah-based TestOut Corporation and employs several dozen Utah residents who work remotely and at Kiln-Lehi.
