Mixed IT Employment Landscape
IT Jobs Continue to Slip in February Despite Unfilled Positions
IT Jobs declined 0.12% month-over-month in February despite an unemployment rate in IT of only 2.1% in Q4, according to TechServe Alliance, the national trade association of the Technology Staffing and Solutions Industry. On a year-over-year basis, IT employment was down 1.59% from February 2022, a net of 87,000 jobs. The Engineering sector showed a year-over-year job growth rate of 3.49% with the addition of 93,600 jobs during the year and with an unemployment rate of 2.2% in Q4.
“In the aggregate, U.S. IT employment continued to decline reflecting softer demand in some sectors of the economy. In particular, tech companies are retrenching after over-hiring during the height of the pandemic and its immediate aftermath,” said Mark Roberts, CEO of TechServe Alliance. “However, actual employment of individuals does not happen in the aggregate. Many companies in a range of sectors continue to have difficulty hiring for high-demand IT skill sets. With a historically low IT unemployment rate of 2.1% in Q4 and with hundreds of thousands of open positions, the IT employment landscape does not fit a single narrative.”