The two components information technology (IT) employment – industry and occupation – each showed signs of an improving labor market, according to analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics #JobsReport by CompTIA, the nonprofit trade association for the global tech industry.

While overall tech industry employment showed a slight decline of 5,600 jobs, three of five sectors experienced positive gains. Tech manufacturing led the way with a net increase of 7,300 jobs, covering both technical and non-technical positions.

On the tech occupation front, IT jobs across all industry sectors of the economy increased by an estimated 227,000 positions¹. Through the first half of the year, tech occupation employment increased in five of the six months.   

"The latest employment data for tech was generally positive, with continuing signs of momentum," said Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA. "While uncertainty is still a major concern, the forward-looking employer job posting figures suggest hiring will accelerate in areas such as software development, IT support, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and certain emerging tech fields."

In addition to tech manufacturing, the other industry sectors that experienced jobs gains for the month include data processing, hosting and related services (+ 5,600) and the other information services category, which includes search engines and portals (+ 2,200).

The IT services and custom software development segment lagged, with an estimated loss of 20,400 positions. The telecommunications sector also continued its downward slide, with a net loss of 300 jobs.

"Because the IT services and custom software development segment is dominated by small firms, they tend to be more sensitive to disruptions in customer spending," said Herbert. "As the broad small business market recovers, we expect hiring will resume among IT services and customer software development firms."  

The forward-looking measure of employer demand for tech talent reached approximately 263,000 job postings in June, an increase of 42,000 postings over the previous month. Each of the top five occupation categories experienced positive gains, led by software and application developers (82,800 job postings). Other in-demand occupations included IT support specialists (22,000), systems engineers and architects (20,700), systems analysts (16,900) and IT project managers (14,600).

Also, postings citing emerging technology as a job role or skill totaled 67,153 for June, an increase of 11,068 from the previous month. Among all IT job postings, approximately one in four referenced emerging technology in some capacity.

The top industries for IT job postings in June included professional, scientific and technical services, finance and insurance, manufacturing, and information.

California, Texas, Colorado, New York, and Pennsylvania were the states with the highest month-over-month increase in IT job postings. At the metro level, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Boston had the largest increases from May to June.

The unemployment rate for IT occupations stood at 4.3% for June, compared to the national rate of 11.1%.  

The CompTIA IT Employment Tracker is available at https://www.slideshare.net/comptia/comptia-it-employment-tracker-july-2020.