Dive Brief:
- Tech jobs across the economy recovered from previous losses, bucking a national trend of flagging economic indicators in February, according to a CompTIA review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data published Friday.
- IT jobs across all sectors grew by 60,000 last month, while tech industry companies added more than 5,000 workers to their ranks during the month. However, IT unemployment increased slightly since last month to 3.8%, in line with the national unemployment rate which also rose to 4.4% from 4.3%.
- Future hiring intent is a positive sign in Friday’s report, according to the IT training and sector data organization. Active job postings for IT positions grew 9% during the month, surpassing the 500,000 mark.
Dive Insight:
After a sluggish January, tech jobs rebounded in February, an outlier against a broader hiring pullback happening across different pockets of the economy.
“Today’s data show that the labor market has averaged essentially zero net job creation over the past six months,” said Cory Stahl, chief economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, in an email to CIO Dive. “This is concerning because when an economy stops creating jobs, it’s often not long before it starts losing them. The key question now is whether February was a temporary setback or the start of a more concerning trend.”
CIOs should consider the current environment as an opportunity to shore up gaps in skill sets, according to Dice CEO Art Zeile.
“It’s still a buyer’s market, meaning that hiring managers have the upper hand in negotiations,” Zeile told CIO Dive. “Hiring is still relatively suppressed compared with, let’s say, 2019 and clearly 2022. CTOs and CIOs have the ability to pick and choose talent.”
The observation aligns with recent Dice research, which found that 88% of tech professionals perceive employers to hold more power in the open market, and yet, more than half of them are actively looking for their next role — up from 39% in 2024.
The growing maturity of enterprise AI initiatives is giving tech hiring a boost. CompTIA included AI engineers in its list of high-demand positions in February, and Dice found roughly 60% of active job postings require at least one AI skill.
“Last year, everybody was a deer in the headlights,” Zeile said. “They didn’t know what to do with AI. This year it feels like there are real projects, and people are hiring engineers that have AI skills.”
