Dive Brief:
- New job postings for technology occupations, including tech support, cybersecurity engineers and software developers, hit a three-year high in April just as several companies this week announced AI-driven layoffs. CompTIA’s analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, released Friday, showed more than 271,483 new job postings and more than 575,000 total active job postings.
- Tech occupation employment rose by 260,000 roles, driving the unemployment rate among technology professionals down from 3.9% in March to 3.5% in April, according to CompTIA. The U.S. unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3%.
- “We’re really encouraged to see the job posting numbers start to climb, which tells us that companies are beginning to be a little bit less cautious,” Seth Robinson, VP of industry research at CompTIA, told CIO Dive. “They’re beginning to be a little bit more willing to renew their investments and their progress for digital transformation, and they’re beginning to get clarity around what AI will mean in their business. All of that is still leading to a strong and growing appetite for technology skills.”
Dive Insight:
The federal jobs report provided a positive outlook on the tech hiring landscape just as several companies announced layoffs in the name of AI.
Ahead of its Q1 2026 earnings call on Thursday, San Francisco-based Cloudflare said it’s reducing its workforce by more than 1,100 employees globally as it shifts to an “agentic AI-first operating model.” The company said its AI use increased by more than 600% in the last three months as employees in finance, human resources, engineering and other business functions run thousands of AI agent sessions daily.
“That means being intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era in order to supercharge the value we deliver to our customers and to honor our mission to help build a better Internet for everyone, everywhere,” CEO Matthew Prince told investors.
It’s not the only company this week citing AI as a driving force behind layoffs. European banking institution Commerzbank said Friday it’s planning an additional workforce reduction of around 3,000 jobs as part of the bank’s ongoing digital transformation and effort to deploy AI agents that will reduce labor-intensive tasks. Earlier this week, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong shared that the cryptocurrency firm will reduce its workforce by roughly 14% partly due to AI.
“AI is changing how we work,” Armstrong said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks.”
Technology companies including Amazon and Meta have also undergone rounds of layoffs in part due to a broader AI push. Technology sector companies have laid off over 85,411 employees so far in 2026, according to a May report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Despite AI’s influence in hiring, technology remains a strong career choice, Robinson said. Overall employee headcount out of large technology companies in particular are still above 2020 and 2021 numbers.
“There was just such massive hiring that there needed to be some kind of rightsizing, and there was inevitably going to be,” he said. “We’ve seen those cycles before.”
Plus, enterprises are continuing to look for skills in traditional job roles, Robinson said. Some of the top job postings in April included software developer, cybersecurity engineer, tech support specialist and AI engineer, according to the CompTIA report.
“You’ve got people that are at various stages of technology or AI adoption and they’re all trying to build that strong foundation of skills that will allow them to take that next step into more advanced capability,” Robinson said.
