IT Jobs Market Healthy, Particularly for Software Developers

Two reports focusing on the IT jobs market project a healthy picture for technology professionals, particularly for software developers.

In the U.S. IT sector, employment enjoyed a bounceback in June, adding 32,100 new jobs to more than offset job losses experienced in May, according to CompTIA’s analysis of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment data released July 8.

Overall IT sector employment was estimated at 4,389,600 jobs as of June 30. All categories within the IT sector, with the exception of tech manufacturing, recorded positive job growth in June.

In addition, CompTIA’s analysis of numbers from the BLS found the number of IT occupation job postings in June was up modestly from the previous month, with software developer positions topping the list by a wide margin.

Information services, including search portals, were up 2,500 jobs, while data processing, hosting and related services were up 2,200 jobs and IT software and services and computer systems design were up 1,400 jobs.

Overall, IT occupation employment gained 74,000 net jobs in June, reversing two months of decline—although the report noted computer and electronic products manufacturing lost 2,100 jobs in June.

According to an analysis of the data in the latest report from online IT jobs portal Dice, some 51 percent of managers and recruiters said that software developers represented their top hiring priority in 2016, while another 15 percent said they wanted software engineers.

Another 3 percent wanted tech pros that specialize in some aspect of data analytics and data science, including developers of big data applications and data architects. About 4 percent wanted managers.

The report also revealed only a handful of employers sought IT professionals skilled in desktop support; QA testing; digital creative tools, including video development; and enterprise software such as SAP HANA or Oracle ERP.

Employment of computer and information technology occupations is projected to grow 12 percent from 2014 to 2024, faster than the average for all occupations, according to the BLS.

These occupations are expected to add about 488,500 new jobs, to about 4.4 million jobs in 2024 from about 3.9 million jobs in 2014, in part due to a greater emphasis on cloud computing, the collection and storage of big data, the Internet of things (IoT) and the continued demand for mobile computing.

The agency noted the median annual wage for computer and information technology occupations was $81,430 in May 2015, far higher than the $36,200 median annual wage for all occupations.