IT Sector Records Modest Job Growth In September, CompTIA Analysis Reveals

Information technology (IT) sector employment grew for the third consecutive month in September, though the gain was modest at just 2,900 new jobs, according to the IT Employment Tracker released today by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the technology industry.

September’s IT sector job growth was led by the software and services category, which added 5,400 jobs, according to CompTIA’s analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Situation report (#jobsreport) released this morning.

“Services and software have accounted for 80 percent of new job growth in the IT sector so far this year,” said Tim Herbert, senior vice president, research and market intelligence, CompTIA. “This reflects the continued momentum of businesses of all types pursuing digital strategies.”

September job growth also occurred in the information segment, with search portals (up 2,100) and data processing, hosting and related services category (up 600).

The gains were offset, however, by another month of declines in telecommunications (down 3,700 jobs in September) and computer and electronics product manufacturing (down 1,500). In 2016, these two categories have shed 27,200 jobs.

Total IT sector employment stands at about 4.4 million. Thru the first three quarters of 2016, IT job growth stood at 1.2 percent. To equal the annual growth rate of 2015, job gains will need to pick-up in the fourth quarter.

More Volatility for IT Occupation Employment

The second component of the nation’s IT workforce – IT occupations across all other industries – experienced another month of volatility in September, losing 142,000 jobs. This follows a month (August) when 205,000 IT positions were added to the economy. Year to date, there have been four months of positive job gains, and five months of job losses.

“There are a number of limitations with the monthly occupation-level data published by the BLS, so we don’t want to jump to conclusion based on a month of data,” said Herbert. “The macro trend points toward sustained demand for tech talent.”

For the year, job growth in core IT positions has grown by about 17,000 positions and totals approximately 4.5 million.

Postings for IT Job Openings Rebounds

Today’s CompTIA report also finds that after several down months, IT job posting activity picked up in September with a gain of 22,600 postings. There was positive momentum across the top five occupations: software and application developers, computer systems engineers and architects, IT project managers, computer systems analysts, and computer user support specialists.

Though every job posting does not result in a new hire, and companies may have multiple postings for a single position, the job posting data is an indicator of where companies are focusing their technology investments.

The CompTIA IT Employment Tracker report is available at

http://www.slideshare.net/comptia/comptia-it-employment-tracker-october-2016

For more CompTIA research on technology employment, skills and workforce trends visit https://www.comptia.org/insight-tools/business?tags=it%20workforce.