Dive Brief:
- The tech workforce contracted in February, shedding workers in every sector, according to a CompTIA analysis of Friday’s U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly data.
- The unemployment rate for technologists rose to 2.2%, up from 1.5% in January, according to the IT industry trade group’s report. That’s still more than a point below the 3.6% rate for all workers nationally.
- Tech sector companies shed just over 11,000 jobs, a 0.2% month-over-month decline in a workforce of 5.5 million. Tech occupations in all industry sectors experienced a slightly larger reduction of 0.6%, yet still totaled more than 6.4 million, the report said.
Dive Insight:
The February drop-off was more modest than expected amid the downsizing push sweeping the tech sector.
Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Salesforce were four of the big players that made headlines in January, contributing to nearly 130,000 jobs cut by 475 tech companies so far this year, according to Layoffs.fyi’s running tally.
The impact on broader workforce numbers was smaller than anticipated, Tim Herbert, chief research officer at IT trade group CompTIA, said in the report.
Buoyed by digital transformation business initiatives and sustained need for IT skills beyond the tech sector, workforce demand remains strong, according to analyst firm Gartner.
“In key function areas, like data science, software engineering and cybersecurity, the talent supply remains as tight or tighter than before,” Mbula Schoen, senior director analyst at Gartner, said in a Tuesday report.
IT leaders should expect "increased competition" across several talent pools, according to Schoen. The cost of IT talent will likely rise, too.
Even in the tech sector, where hiring surged over the last two years, workforce numbers remain comparatively healthy.
The companies linked to the ten largest tech sector layoff announcements currently employ over 150,000 more workers than they did at the beginning of 2020, according to the Gartner report.
“Context is critical,” Herbert said. “The recent pullback represents a relatively small fraction of the massive tech workforce. The long-term outlook remains unchanged with demand for tech talent powering employment gains across the economy.”
