Dive Brief:
- Despite concerns over high-profile layoffs, tech industry wages grew faster than any other sector during the second quarter of 2026, according to a Payscale report released last week. The compensation data company reviewed a proprietary data set of more than 36,000 jobs.
- Technology sector workers saw an average annual wage growth of 6.9% during the quarter, the report showed. Tech was one of just three industries reporting wage growth rates higher than the current inflation rate.
- As businesses retool themselves around AI deployment, some specialized jobs are commanding significant premiums in the market, driving up the average for the tech industry, Ruth Thomas, SVP and chief compensation strategist at Payscale, told CIO Dive.
Dive Insight:
The current hiring landscape remains uneven as businesses press ahead on their AI goals. While some categories rise in demand, others slide, giving way to uneven growth.
“The storyline is about workplaces restructuring for the AI organization they want to be in the future, and it’s that restructuring that we’re starting to see play out in our numbers,” Thomas said.
In June, open job postings for tech positions exceeded 600,000 for the second consecutive month, a sign of ongoing demand in key categories, according to a CompTIA report. Unemployment in IT roles, another indicator to watch in the hiring landscape, dipped below 3% for the first time this year.
As automation touches more parts of operations, leaders are grappling with long-term costs. AI-enabled software development will become pricier than human-written code by 2028, according to Gartner projections. In the meantime, replacement of roles due to automation tells only one part of the story.
“One of the things we’re seeing is potentially lower-level roles being automated in this segment, and what is being rewarded is more higher-tenured and experienced roles,” Thomas said.
But the full picture of AI’s effect on hiring is complex. “It’s not a clean story of everybody leaving [and] being replaced by AI,” said Thomas.
For tech executives, attracting and retaining talent for key positions calls for close collaboration with HR and talent leaders.
“CIOs themselves need to sit with their HR and talent leaders to think about where they really need talent, where skill transformation is going to be happening in their business, mapping out the skills of the future and being very tactical about the talent and the jobs that they need,” Thomas said.
