Dive Brief:
- CIOs in large enterprises expect to grow their IT teams in 2023, but souring macroeconomic indicators have pressured tech leaders to adjust workforce strategies, according to Gartner research published Tuesday.
- More than 4 in 5 CIOs in businesses with revenue of $1 billion or more planned to increase their IT headcount, according to a survey of 501 CIOs worldwide from October to November 2022.
- Despite growth ambitions, adverse economic indicators pushed IT leaders to slow or freeze hiring for roles, decrease the overall IT budget and lay off employees. Nearly half of enterprise CIOs plan to invest in upskilling or reskilling training to ensure teams meet goals, according to the survey.
Dive Insight:
Layoffs have continued in 2023, but other sectors still struggle to acquire and retain skilled IT talent, according to Jose Ramirez, senior principal analyst at Gartner.
The talent cutbacks seen earlier this year, mainly a feature of the tech industry, represented a reversal of earlier hiring binges to a more stabilized trend.
In May, the overall number of tech jobs across the economy increased by 45,000 while the tech sector lost nearly 5,000 jobs, according to CompTIA’s analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
“Additionally, many tech layoffs have yet to be critical IT roles,” Ramirez said in an email. “CIOs are still hiring for architecture, cloud computing, cybersecurity and AI/ML skills.”
There were around 15,000 job openings for AI-skilled tech workers in May, according to CompTIA’s analysis.
Businesses have also turned to other avenues to acquire skilled talent. Accenture unveiled plans to double its AI workforce to reach 80,000 AI-skilled employees through hiring, acquisitions and training in June, just months after the professional services company announced layoffs impacting 19,000 people.
Meta Platforms said it was planning to ramp up hiring to support its AI efforts in April after a series of layoffs at the company impacted more than 20,000 workers. Vendors, such as Microsoft and Google, have released AI training courses for organizations looking to fill skills gaps.
As enterprises experiment with generative AI, questions remain about its impact on employment trends.
But even as the technology matures, Gartner expects the global job impact "will be neutral in the next several years due to enterprise adoption lags, implementation times and learning curves,” Ramirez said in the report.
