The slowdown in hiring by U.S. employers brought on by the surging coronavirus extended to information technology (IT) employment in November, according to an analysis by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the IT industry and workforce.
The monthly U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Situation (#JobsReport) shows that employers in the nation’s technology sector reduced payroll by an estimated 8,600 net jobs in November. The total includes technical and non-technical positions. Before November tech sector employment had seen positive gains in three of the past four months.
The wider economic anxiety is also reflected in the latest IT occupation employment data. Employers across all sectors of the economy reduced their net workforce base by an estimated 128,000 core IT positions in November. The unemployment rate for IT occupations stood at 2.4% in November, below the national unemployment rate of 6.7%.
“The latest reporting of coronavirus cases, labor market data and business activity is a stark reminder of the still fragile recovery,” said Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA. “Employer demand for tech talent hasn’t changed, but rising uncertainty undoubtedly affects hiring decisions.”
November saw tech sector employment declines in four of five categories. The bulk of the job losses came it the IT services and custom software development category, which declined by an estimated 7,600 positions. Only the data processing, hosting and related services category ended the month in positive territory (+ 1,200).
November employer job postings for new IT hiring declined by about 42,000 from the previous month. Industry sectors that advertised the most job openings included professional, scientific and technical services (36,655), finance and insurance (18,200), manufacturing (15,114) and information (11,151). Software and application developers were the most in-demand job role companies were looking to fill, followed by IT support specialists, systems engineers and architects, IT project managers and systems analysts.
The CompTIA IT Employment Tracked for November is available here.
