Technology sector records employment growth in April
The U.S. technology sector has now recorded employment growth in each of the past five months, according to analysis by CompTIA.
Technology companies added 16,600 jobs in April, a combination of technical and non-technical positions, the report data reveals. So far in 2021 tech industry companies have added 60,900 workers.
IT occupation employment increasing
Employers across all sectors of the economy reduced their hiring of IT workers by an estimated 234,000 positions. This was the first decline after four consecutive months of employment gains. For the year IT occupation employment has increased by 72,000 positions.
Employer job postings for open IT positions held steady in April, increasing by a modest 1,690 over March, totaling nearly 309,000.
“As employers increase hiring activity, expect more tech workers to explore their career options,” said Tim Herbert, executive VP for research and market intelligence at CompTIA. “In a competitive labor market, companies will need to be even more diligent in their approach to work practices and corporate culture in retaining tech talent.”
All five tech occupation categories showed solid employment growth last month, led by new hiring in IT services and custom software development (+6,200), information services, including search engines (+3,400) and telecommunication (+3,300), the category’s best performance since January. Computer and electronic products manufacturing (+2,100) and data processing, hosting and related services (+1,600) were also in positive territory.
Employment growth by region and industries
The latest job posting data shows that California, Texas, Colorado, Arizona and Florida had the largest month over month increase in IT job postings. Phoenix, Denver, Los Angeles, Dallas and Sacramento had the strongest performance among metropolitan areas.
The analysis also shows that a number of other regions have seen strong demand for IT workers so far this year, including Charlotte (18,543 IT job postings), Baltimore (16,182), Detroit (16,050), Raleigh (14,712), Tampa (13,542), St. Louis (12,092), Portland, Ore. (11,990) and Columbus, Ohio (11,102).
Industries with significant numbers of job openings for IT professionals in April included professional, scientific and technical services, finance and insurance, manufacturing, information, retail trade, public administration, health care and social assistance, educational services, and transportation and warehousing.
Employers continue to seek out software and application developers, advertising 93,500 open positions last month, more than the next four occupation categories combined. Still, demand for core IT talent remains solid, with employers advertising open positions for IT support specialists (26,000), systems engineers and architects (22,900), systems analysts (20,400) and IT project managers (19,100).