IT Job Market shrinks by 13K jobs in Q1
IT job market shrank by 13,700 jobs in the first quarter of 2023
Layoffs and economic uncertainty drove CIOs and CFOs to slow IT Hiring
(Park City UT – Janco Associates Inc. (https://e-janco.com)– Janco reports that in the first quarter of 2023, the IT job market lost 13,700 jobs. That is in sharp contrast with 51K jobs that were created in Q1 of 2022. Layoffs by the big tech companies including Accenture (39,000), Microsoft (2,700), Meta (11,000), and Alphabet (12,000) have resulted in over 158,000 tech workers that have been terminated in the first quarter. The tech centers of San Francisco and Seattle get the headlines, but these reductions in the number of IT Pros employed are occurring nationwide.
The growth of the IT job market stopped with a decline of 2,600 jobs in January and 11,600 jobs in February. In March the IT job market rebounded with 500 jobs added. The three-month moving average of IT job market growth went negative in February and moved up in the positive range in March. Currently, there is an excess of 145K unfilled jobs for IT Pros due to a lack of qualified candidates.
The CEO of Janco, M. Victor Janulaitis said, “Based on our analysis, the IT job market and opportunities for IT professionals are limited but exist for experienced individuals. Layoffs, for the most part, did not hit developers. In the first quarter. The big losers were telecommunications losing 4,500 jobs, hosting and cloud providers losing 6,100 jobs, and content providers another 1,500 jobs. The jobs lost were in data center operations, administrative and HR roles related to recruiting, and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). Some roles, especially in telecommunications and data center operations are being automated and eliminated. Driving this is, CIOs and CFOs who are looking to improve the productivity of IT by automating processes and reporting where possible. They are focusing on eliminating “non-essential” managers and staff. Experienced coders and developers still have opportunities. The highest demand continues to be for security professionals, programmers, and blockchain processing IT Pros. Currently, there are over 145K unfilled jobs.”
IT Job Market Change - March 2024
IT Job Market grew by 2,300 jobs last month - 2,800 YTD
Updated with the data from the BLS and Janco Associates Inc as of March 2024
Analysis shows that IT Job Market has shrunk by 48,600 jobs in 2023. In the first two month of 2024 the IT job market grew by 2,400.
In the last three (3) month the IT Job market grew by 2,800 jobs. This chart is not the originally published one, rather it is updated with the current data based on the analysis by Janco Associates, Inc. For the latest IT Employment Data click here.
He said, “The general belief there will be an economic downturn remains high for many CIOs and CFOs. This is impacting all decisions around hiring new IP Pros and increasing technology-related expenditures. Given these facts, we believe that median salaries for IT Pros in 2023 will be 3-4% salary above 2022 levels, not the 7%-8% that was budgeted for 2023.”
The CEO added, “According to the latest BLS data analyzed, there are now just over 4.18 million jobs for IT Professionals in the US. Layoffs at big tech companies are having an adverse on overall IT hiring. More CIOs are looking at a troubling economic climate and are evaluating the need for increased headcounts based on the technological requirements of their specific business operations.”
There has been a major shift in the creation of new IT Jobs - economic slowing is the driver.. We estimate that an number of new IT jobs that will be created in 2023 will now be between 60k-70k.
With this as a background, Janco forecasts the growth of the IT Job Market in 2023 to be in 60K to 70K new jobs range. That will be less growth than in 2021 and 2022, but still with some growth in the latter half of this year. To assist in managing these troubled times, Janco has just released the 2023 edition CIO Management Tool Kit. See https://e-janco.com/it-management-toolkit.html. This tool kit has been updated to reflect changes to the IT Infrastructure caused by compliance mandates and the current economic environment - including WFH and Cloud processing. It meets all of the mandated security requirements and best practices.
Janco is an international consulting firm that follows issues that concern CIOs and CFOs. The firm publishes a series of IT and business Infrastructure HandiGuides® and Templates including IT Infrastructure Policies and Procedures, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Template, Security Template, IT Job Descriptions, and its semi-annual IT Salary Survey.
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