U.S. technology employment continued to expand in March, contributing to the strongest month for hiring the country has experienced since last August, according to an analysis by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the information technology (IT) industry and workforce.
Tech sector companies added 9,700 jobs in March, a combination of technical and non-technical positions, data in the “Employment Situation” report released this week by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reveals.
Employers across all sectors of the economy increased their base of IT workers by an estimated 50,000 positions.
Employer hiring activity for technology positions continues to trend upward with the fourth consecutive month of positive increases in job postings. There were more than 307,000 job postings during March by US employers seeking to fill openings for various technology-related positions.
“With employer hiring activity spanning all 50 states and the District of Columbia, it confirms the broad-based demand for tech talent,” Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA. “Technology underpins just about every business across every industry sector across every state and we’re seeing that in the hiring data.”
CompTIA’s analysis of the latest job posting data reveals that Texas (+4,180), Georgia (+2,861), New York (+2,518), Florida (+2,203) and Ohio (+2,140) were the states with the largest month over month increase in IT job postings. At the metro level New York City (+3,193), Atlanta (+2,519), Dallas (+1,872), Austin (+1,450) and Richmond, Va. (+1,114) had the best performance.
Industries with the strongest demand for IT workers included professional, scientific and technical services (53,289 job postings), finance and insurance (26,313), manufacturing (25,617), information (22,940) and retail trade (10,010).
Among specific job roles, companies are looking for software and application developers (93,000), IT support specialists (25,800), systems engineers and architects (23,200), systems analysts (20,000) and IT project managers (19,900). Nearly 30% of the openings were for positions in emerging technologies, including nearly 15,000 for jobs in artificial intelligence or roles that require AI skills.
March employment growth within the tech sector, was led by new hiring in the IT services and custom software development category, which expanded by 5,500 positions. Computer and electronic products manufacturing (+3,100) and other information services, including search engines (+3,000) also saw solid gains. Job losses were reported in the categories of telecommunications (-1,200) and data processing.
The unemployment rate for IT occupations was 1.9% in March, the lowest rate since August 2019.
The CompTIA Tech Jobs Report is available at https://www.comptia.org/content/tech-jobs-report.
