CompTIA Newsroom

Declines recorded in July but net jobs are up by 203,000-plus since COVID-19 outbreak

Downers Grove, Ill. – U.S. technology-related employment, which has expanded by more than 200,000 positions so far this year, experienced a pause in job growth in July, according to an analysis by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the global technology industry.

The nation’s technology sector scaled back by an estimated 17,300 positions last month, a combination of both technical and non-technical roles, CompTIA’s review of the latest Employment Situation report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals. #JobsReport

IT occupations in all sectors of the economy declined by an estimated 134,000 jobs.

Even with the July job losses, net IT employment is up by more than 203,000 positions since the outbreak of COVID-19. The unemployment rate for IT occupations is 4.4%, less than half of the national unemployment rate of 10.2%.

Over the past five years annual monthly job gains occurred, on average, in six months and job losses were recorded in the other six months. Year to date in 2020 there have been five months of job gains and two months of job losses.

“After several months of tech job gains exceeding expectations in a very difficult economic environment, a pause in tech hiring was not unexpected,” said Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA.

U.S. employer job postings for IT occupations declined in July but still totaled more than 235,000 for the month. The top five job roles companies were looking to fill were software and application developers (70,600 job postings), IT support specialists (21,400), systems engineers and architects (19,100), systems analysts (15,600) and IT project managers (13,300).

California, Texas, Virginia, New York and North Carolina had the highest numbers of IT job postings last month. Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia, Maine and North Dakota recorded the highest month-over-month increase in job postings, though the gains were modest.

At the metro level, employers in New York, Washington, Dallas, San Francisco and Los Angeles led the list for the highest number of IT job postings, though in each instance the total numbers were down from June.

Among specific industries, professional, scientific and technical services (39,956), finance and insurance (18,756), manufacturing (17,473), information (11,095) and retail trade (7,042) had the highest numbers of postings for IT positions.

The CompTIA IT Employment Tracker for August is available at https://www.slideshare.net/comptia/comptia-it-employment-tracker-august-2020.

About CompTIA
The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is a leading voice and advocate for the $5.2 trillion global information technology ecosystem; and the estimated 75 million industry and tech professionals who design, implement, manage, and safeguard the technology that powers the world’s economy. Through education, training, certifications, advocacy, philanthropy, and market research, CompTIA is the hub for advancing the tech industry and its workforce.  www.comptia.org.

Contact:

Steven Ostrowski
CompTIA
+1 (630) 678-8468
sostrowski@comptia.org­
www.comptia.org