CompTIA: Highest Tech Industry Growth Rate in More Than a Decade

A new report by CompTIA shows robust growth in the U.S. technology industry, with nearly 200,000 net new jobs added between 2014 and 2015.

The number of U.S. tech workers grew to more than 6.7 million people, a 3 percent year-over-year increase, according to the Cyberstates 2016 report. Forty-six states had an overall net increase in tech industry jobs in 2015 and the average wage ($105,400) was more than double that of the average private sector wage ($51,600).

“The U.S. tech industry is a major driving force in the overall economy, accounting for 7.1 percent of overall GDP and 11.6 percent of total private sector payroll,” said Todd Thibodeaux, CompTIA’s president and CEO. “The tremendous level of ongoing innovation in the industry, making technology more affordable and accessible to more users, has us encouraged about growth prospects for 2016 and beyond.”

Growth once again was led by the IT services sector, which added more than 105,000 jobs between 2014 and 2015. The increase to 2.2 million represents nearly 5 percent year-over-year growth.

In addition, IT services establishments accounted for more than half of all tech establishments in 2015. The channel is continuing to play an integral role in bringing technology to market, according to CompTIA.{ad}

“Much of this growth can be attributed to the current trends in cloud computing, mobility, automation and social technologies that are reshaping businesses large and small,” said Tim Herbert, CompTIA’s senior vice president of research and market intelligence. “Momentum behind the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to grow, while the critical importance of cybersecurity shows no signs of abating.”

The telecommunications and Internet services sector maintained its growth trajectory for 2015, according to the report. The sector added nearly 36,000 jobs, resulting in a growth rate of 2.8 percent.

Growth was largely driven by Internet services categories. Data processing, hosting and related services added 16,671 jobs, while the category covering Web-search portals added 16,192 jobs.

Declines were most prevalent in the wireless telecommunications carriers category, according to the report.

As the software industry continues transitioning from packaged, on-premises software products to cloud-based software as a service (SaaS), it grew by 1.7 percent, adding 5,266 new jobs in 2015.

Core IT services, representing firms providing IT implementation, integration, management, support and custom software development services, generated the largest gains in employment across …

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…  the entire tech-industry landscape. Over the past five years, the core IT services sector has added nearly a half-million new jobs.

Engineering, R&D and testing services employment totaled an estimated 1.7 million jobs in 2015, up nearly 3 percent over 2014. This represents the fifth consecutive year of growth in this sector after bottoming out in 2010.

“Some of the areas that experienced the strongest growth include software developers, cybersecurity professionals, data professionals and also categories that are sometimes overlooked,” Herbert said. “IT support specialists, for example. As we continue to add more devices, more platforms, more operating systems, there continues to be strong demand for workers that can support and ensure that workers have devices that are running the way they should.”

There were 473,500 tech establishments in 2015, up 2.7 percent from 2014, according to the report. The tech industry payroll of $708 billion in 2014 accounted for more than 11.6 percent of all U.S. private sector payroll.

At the state level, the largest jobs gains were recorded in California (+59,500), New York (+15,500), Texas (+13,800), Massachusetts (+11,700) and Florida (+11,400). The states with the highest concentration of tech workers were Massachusetts (9.8 percent of private sector employment), Virginia (9.5 percent), Colorado (9 percent), Maryland (8.6 percent) and California (8.2 percent).

The largest states by tech industry employment continued to be California, Texas and New York.

The number of job postings for tech-sector positions and tech occupations grew by 30 percent last year, according to the report.

“This is really just a signal of ongoing demand for tech talent of all types,” Herbert said.