December Poised to Close Out Banner Year for IT Job Growth

Despite disappointing overall U.S. job growth last month, the IT sector held strong and is expected to close out 2018 with a total of 83,500 new jobs.

That’s according to Janco Associates‘ latest IT jobs report for 2018. It projects 7,000 new IT jobs in December, with 76,500 new jobs already created — 20,100 more than during the same period of 2017.

According to an analysis released by CompTIA, an estimated 13,500 new tech sector jobs were created last month, including 7,600 jobs in the IT services, custom software development and computer system design category, which led last month’s hiring.

“The current economic recovery continues to create demand for IT professionals,” said Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis. “Several new positions with new responsibilities have been added to address robotics, IoT, SEO, social networking, compliance mandates and identity management. CIOs are creating new jobs that address the increased focus on internet-based operations, compliance and digital automation. It’s now not unusual to see positions like SEO specialists and IoT-robotics analysts added to the mix of IT professionals that are being recruited.”

Janco conducted several spot interviews with two dozen CIOs in the last two weeks of November and all of them said they were actively recruiting for IT professionals for new development activities and replacements for those who have left in the last few months. Attrition rates are the highest they have been in the last several years.

Janco also found that several organizations have slowed the hiring process as they work to absorb the new hires.

“Despite the looming economic headwinds, employer demand for tech talent remains steady,” said Tim Herbert, CompTIA’s senior vice president for research and market intelligence. “The past three months have been the best stretch for technology industry employment gains this year.”

CompTIA’s report reveals that November job gains occurred in computer and electronic products manufacturing (more than 3,200, and including more than 1,400 in semiconductors and electronic components manufacturing), information services, including search portals (more than 2,700), and data processing, hosting and related services (more than 1,100).

Telecommunications employment fell by an estimated 1,100 jobs, according to the association’s analysis of today’s U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) “Employment Situation” report.

Hiring for core technology jobs across the entire economy increased by 67,000 positions last month.

The November unemployment rate for IT occupations was reported as 2.4 percent, according to BLS statistics, down slightly from the 2.5 percent rate in November 2017. Women and men working in IT occupations have identical unemployment rates of 2.4 percent.

New job postings for core technology workers was down about 22,626 positions to 273,980, though the total was still above the 2018 monthly average of 252,000.