The newest job numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics make IT hiring appear like it is in freefall, however that is not the case in any respect, says consultancy agency Janco.
In its latest evaluation of the IT job market, Janco Associates highlighted that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reclassified a number of job titles, resulting in a downward adjustment of over 111,000 positions for November and December 2024. This revision contributed to an general decline of 123,200 IT jobs for the yr. Regardless of these changes, Janco notes that IT hiring is at the moment on the rise.
“Many CEOs have given CFOs and CIOs the inexperienced mild to rent IT Execs,” Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis mentioned of the primary month of 2025. “IT Execs who have been unemployed final month discovered jobs extra shortly than was anticipated as CIOs rushed to fill open positions.”
There’s nonetheless a 5.7 p.c unemployment price within the IT sector in January, Janco famous, which is larger than the nationwide common of 4 p.c – and which may rise additional as Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) pushes forward with federal workforce reductions aimed toward streamlining operations.
“Over the previous a number of quarters a lot of the general job development was within the authorities sectors of the financial system,” Janulaitis mentioned. “With the brand new administration that can possibly not be the case sooner or later.
“The affect of the DOGE initiatives has not been felt as of but,” Janulaitis added. “Financial uncertainty continues to harm general IT hiring.”
Regardless of this, Janco reported an addition of 11,000 new IT roles in January. Sadly, there’s additionally been a surge in IT unemployment over the identical interval, with the variety of jobless IT execs rising to 152,000 in January – a rise of 54,000 in a single month.
Whereas Janco focuses narrowly on core IT roles in enterprise environments, CompTIA’s evaluation of the broader tech {industry} paints a extra optimistic image based mostly on the identical BLS statistics from the previous month.
CompTIA reported a tech industry-wide unemployment price of simply 2.9 p.c, and mentioned that IT companies and software program growth hiring offset appreciable losses within the telecom sector in January.
Firms searching for new tech professionals aren’t overwhelmingly searching for IT roles, CompTIA mentioned. UI/UX designers, knowledge scientists and knowledge analysts have been the roles with the best month-to-month achieve in hiring. Tech help specialists have been included within the high 5, falling into the quantity 4 place, and programs analysts rounded out the highest 5.
Shifting again to Janco’s extra targeted have a look at enterprise IT roles, “the best demand continues to be for AI, safety professionals, new know-how programmers, and web processing IT Execs,” Janulaitis mentioned. Janco expects AI to scale back demand for entry-level IT positions within the coming months as automation takes over routine duties. As to the place the roles might be discovered – do not go knocking on the doorways of the most important of huge tech corporations.
“We’ve got discovered hiring and job development continues to be in small to mid-sized enterprises,” Janulaitis mentioned. “Lots of the bigger corporations proceed to be targeted on enhancements in productiveness and changing lower-level abilities with AI functions.”
Closing out the report, Janco provided a combined outlook: Whereas IT jobs are anticipated to develop over the following few years, many white-collar roles may very well be eradicated.
“Over the following 5 years, the variety of people employed as IT professionals will improve whereas many white-collar jobs within the perform can be eradicated with the appliance of AI and LLM to IT,” Janco predicted. ®
