Tech hiring ramps up, according to latest CompTIA employment analysis
The nationwide unemployment rate for technology occupations fell to 2.5 percent in September, the steepest month-over-month decrease in four years, according to analysis by Downers Grove, Illinois-based CompTIA, a nonprofit association for the tech industry and workforce. The report does not specify a Utah tech job unemployment rate but reported a slight drop in the job posting for tech positions in the state, a statistic that generally accompanies a lower jobless rate.
Utah employers listed 2,343 job posting for tech positions in September, down slightly from August, which reported 2,443 tech postings. In the Salt Lake City metro area specifically, there were 1,570 tech jobs postings in September, compared to 1,783 in August.
All four of the monthly metrics tracked by CompTIA were in positive territory in September, according to the report. In addition to the drop in the unemployment rate, other takeaways from the report include:
- Tech companies added 8,583 workers.
- Tech occupations in the entire economy increased by 118,000 new positions.
- Employers increased the number of job postings for future tech hiring.
Analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Jobs Report data reveals new hiring was primarily driven by the subsectors of cloud infrastructure, data processing and hosting (up 6,000 jobs); and the tech services and custom software development sector (up 2,900 jobs). An estimated 6.4 million professionals are now employed in core tech occupations by companies of all types across the economy, CompTIA said.
“It was never really a question of if, but when employers were going to resume hiring,” Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. “A broad mix of companies viewed recent economic developments as the greenlight to move forward in addressing their tech talent needs.”