Paced by another strong month of hiring in software and technology services, the U.S. IT sector added an estimated 7,300 jobs in February, according to the CompTIA IT Employment Tracker.
Software and technology services, the bellwether for technology job growth over the past year, added an estimated 5,500 new positions in February, and 16,800 so far this year, CompTIA’s analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Situation reveals.
For the first time in several months, the telecom sector saw job gains, adding 1,900 positions last month. The category of other information services, including search portals, also increased in February, by 1,400 positions.
Job declines were recorded in computer and electronics products manufacturing (down 800) and data processing, hosting and related services (down 700). The second component of the nation’s IT workforce – IT occupations across all other industries – showed a decline of 61,000 jobs last month.
“IT occupation data tends to show a higher degree of volatility from month to month,” said Tim Herbert, senior vice president of research and market intelligence at CompTIA. “In 2016, for example, there were seven months of job gains and five months of job losses. This reflects the normal pattern of labor turnover whereby workers may resign to seek new opportunities, retire or are laid off.”
The number of IT occupation job postings in February totaled an estimated 107,900, up 16,700 from January. Software and application developers topped the list of positions employers were seeking to fill in February, with an estimated 55,000 job postings. Other in-demand occupations included computer systems engineers and architects, computer user support specialists, computer systems analysts, and web developers.
While every posting does not result in a new hire, and companies often will have multiple postings for a single position, the job posting data is an indicator of employers’ technology priorities.
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