Hiring in the U.S. technology sector bounced back in November after two months of modest employment gains, according to analysis by CompTIA, the leading technology industry association.
The sector added an estimated 15,500 jobs last month, CompTIA’s examination of today’s U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics #JobsReport finds.
The positive performance within the tech sector was countered by the loss of an estimated 65,000 information technology occupations across all other sectors of the economy.
“Tech industry employment growth is tracking ahead of last year’s rate,” said Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA. “Telecom aside, all the major categories – tech services, software, manufacturing and data – are performing reasonably well.”
According to CompTIA’s “IT Industry Outlook 2020” report, software development is the area where most companies expect to place their hiring focus in the upcoming year, but there is also strong demand for cybersecurity, data and technology infrastructure talent.
November’s job gains in the tech sector were powered by two employment categories that accounted for 80% of the growth.
The sub-group of other information services, which includes search engines and portals and other businesses that supply, store and provide information, added an estimated 6,200 new jobs, the category’s strongest month of hiring in 2019.
Hiring in custom software development and computer systems design occupations grew by some 5,800 positions in November.
Computer and electronics product manufacturing, grew by 2,700 positions, with about half of the new hiring occurring in the semiconductors and electronic components sub-group. Data processing, hosting and related services added 2,100 jobs.
Employment in the telecommunications category by 1,300 positions last month.
Through November tech sector employment has grown by an estimated 115,200. If not for the consistently weak showing in telecommunications hiring throughout 2019 the sector’s job gains for the year would total 144,600.
The number of employer job postings for core IT positions declined by nearly 42,000 from October to November. Still, job postings totaled 320,890 in November, with software and application developers the most sought-after professionals (104,700).
California (50,158), Texas (30,057) and Virginia (17,719) were the top three states for core IT job postings last month, while Texas, North Carolina and Illinois recorded the largest numerical change in postings from November 2018 to November 2019.
The top three metro markets for core IT job postings last month were Dallas (2,233), Charlotte (1,807) and Boston (1,500).
The CompTIA IT Employment Tracker for December is available here.
