CompTIA: IT Employment Rebounds in October Across Four Key Metrics

Written by Edward Gately
November 6, 2020

Tech sector employment has seen positive gains in three of the past four months.

IT employment entered positive territory last month with advancements across four key workforce metrics, according to CompTIA‘s latest data.

Sector employment, occupation employment, the unemployment rate and employer job postings all improved in October. That’s according to CompTIA’s analysis of the monthly U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation report.

Last month in the United States:

Technology companies added 14,200 workers, a combination of technical and non-technical jobs;
IT occupations across all industries increased by 142,000 jobs;
The unemployment rate for IT occupations was 2.8%. That’s down from 3.5% in September; and
Employer job postings for new IT hires was up more than 14,000 to nearly 239,000.

Tech sector employment has seen positive gains in three of the past four months. For September, CompTIA reported a mix of good news in IT sector employment gains and disappointing news in IT occupation job losses.

Consistency Among Metrics

CompTIA’s Tim Herbert

“It is reassuring to see consistency in this month’s data with all four metrics pointing to momentum in tech employment,” said Tim Herbert, CompTIA’s executive vice president for research and market intelligence.

October job growth within the tech sector was led by the addition of 15,800 positions in the IT services and custom software development category. That’s an important indicator of SMB activity. Job gains also occurred in tech manufacturing (up 3,500) and data processing, hosting and related services (up 800).

Job postings for open core IT positions totaled 238,815 in October. Postings for software and application developers (72,100) accounted for nearly one-third of the total. Other in-demand occupations included IT support specialists (22,000), systems engineers and architects (18,800), systems analysts (14,800) and IT project managers (14,000).

The percentage of IT job openings that specifically offered remote work or work from home (WFH) as an option was 23% last month. That’s roughly in line with the year-to-date average of 22%.

Demand for tech talent continues to be broad-based with employers across industry sectors in hiring mode. That’s led by professional scientific and technical services, finance and insurance, manufacturing and information.