Jobs in the tech industry are slowly coming back after a disastrous two-month span, according to the nonprofit tech industry trade association CompTIA. Overall, the economy showed renewed signs of life after a disastrous stretch between April and May.
Overall, there was a slight decline of 5,600 jobs in terms of tech industry employment but three of the five sectors saw positive increases. The tech manufacturing sector specifically led the way with a net increase of 7,300 jobs that included technical and non-technical positions. The data processing, hosting, and related services sector saw a 5,600 bump in job gains while the information services category, which includes search engines and portals, experienced a 2,200 position increase. The June 2020 study revealed that for the tech occupation, IT jobs across all industry sectors of the economy increased by an estimated 227,000 positions, but when researchers drilled down further the numbers were a bit more complicated.
"The latest employment data for tech was generally positive, with continuing signs of momentum," said Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA. "While uncertainty is still a major concern, the forward-looking employer job posting figures suggest hiring will accelerate in areas such as software development, IT support, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and certain emerging tech fields."
The industry is still recovering from job losses in April and May. In February, the IT sector reached its peak at nearly 4.8 million positions. But by May it was down to about 4.6 million and stayed steady in June, signaling that things are slowly recovering. For June, the telecommunications sector saw a dip of 300 positions while "IT & software services—computer system design" experienced a loss of 20,400 jobs.
IT job postings also saw a precipitous drop as companies tried to weather the economic storm caused by the coronavirus pandemic. February and March saw 350,000 IT job postings but that figure fell to almost 200,000 by May. June saw a slight rebound to over 250,000, with positions like software developers, IT support specialists, systems engineers/architects, systems analysts, and IT project managers seeing the biggest increases in demand.
Between May and June, cities like Washington, New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Jose, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, and Phoenix saw the biggest bumps in IT job postings. Amazon, Wells Fargo, Anthem Blue Cross, IBM, Northrop Grumman, Stanley Black & Decker, and Boeing were some of the top companies in terms of IT job postings.
Industries ranging from "professional, scientific, and technical Services" to finance, insurance, and manufacturing were the most in need of IT expertise.
"Because the IT services and custom software development segment is dominated by small firms, they tend to be more sensitive to disruptions in customer spending," said Herbert. "As the broad small business market recovers, we expect hiring will resume among IT services and custom software development firms."
The CompTIA report comes on the heels of positive jobs report released last week, showing that employers added 4.8 million jobs, which pushed the nation's unemployment rate down to 11.1%. Despite the positive jobs report, experts believe there may be trouble ahead as coronavirus infections spike across a number of states and some have had to close again.
Glassdoor noted that the jobs report for July may look worse than June if states across the South and West have to put shelter-in-place orders back into effect, but they did say it would not be as bad as what the country saw in April.