Tech Jobs Market Powers On With Strong Gains And Historically Low Unemployment

Career Climbers / 8th August 2022

The technology jobs market continued its run of gains, which contributed to the unexpectedly strong #JobsReport for the month, according to analysis by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the information technology (IT) industry and workforce.

Tech occupations across all industry sectors increased by an estimated 239,000 positions in July, CompTIA’s analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reveals.¹ The unemployment rate for tech occupations was 1.7% in July.

Tech industry level employment experienced a net gain of 12,700 workers, the 20^th consecutive month of employment growth. Tech industry employment has increased by 143,700 jobs this year, an increase of 55% year-over-year.

Employer job postings for technology positions approached 484,000 in July, a slight decrease from the previous month but still at a near record level.² Through the first seven months of 2022 US companies listed approximately 3.1 million job postings for tech positions, an increase of 49% for the same period last year.

“The tech jobs market has repeatedly outperformed in the face of real and perceived economic weakness,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. “The data confirms that for every layoff announcement there are other employers stepping in to take advantage of tech talent hiring opportunities.”

A closer examination of the tech job posting data from July shows that there are employment opportunities at every experience level, in a variety of occupation categories and in nearly every metro market and state across the country.

About one in five tech job postings were for positions requiring two years or less of experience. About half specified three to five years of experience, while 13% sought candidates with nine or more years of experience.

Software developers and engineers are the most in-demand positions employers are looking to hire – nearly 148,000 job postings last month. There is also a strong job market for IT support specialists, IT project managers, systems engineers and architects and network engineers and architects. Positions in emerging technologies or jobs requiring emerging tech skills accounted for one-third of all postings in July.

Within the tech sector, three occupation categories recorded job growth in July – other information services, including search engines (+6,800), data processing, hosting and related services (+4,100) and computer and electronic products manufacturing (+3,300). Hiring in the IT services and custom software development category was flat, while telecommunications-related occupations declined (-1,400).

The “CompTIA Tech Jobs Report” is available at https://www.comptia.org/content/tech-jobs-report. For more analysis and perspective visit the CompTIA Tech Job Report video series at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuqIJd7KnBU_nZd2oXEwa0I5X7Vt124eM.

¹ Monthly occupation level data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tends to experience higher levels of variance and volatility. Labor market data and employer job posting data may be subject to revisions.

² CompTIA analysis of Lightcast employer job posting data.