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Two numbers from last Friday's jobs report look like they can't both be true. Tech employers cut about 10,350 jobs in September, and in the same month active IT job postings climbed to their highest level in more than 3 years.
CompTIA published both in its analysis of the BLS report on October 2. Tech unemployment rose to 3.3% from 3.1% in August. The national rate is 4.2%.
Fewer people hired, more jobs posted
Active IT postings reached 625,633, up 22.4% from a year ago. Employers opened 272,040 new ones in September alone, up 16% year over year. Sixteen of the 20 industries CompTIA tracks posted more openings than in August.
So demand is up and headcount is down. I think a lot of that is caution. The whole US economy added just 29,000 jobs in September, down from 133,000 in August, according to Computerworld. Companies are posting roles they haven't fully committed to filling. That's my read in my opinion.
It also fits the last few weeks. Microsoft, Oracle, and Workday all trimmed staff, and the postings data says employers overall still have engineering work they want done. Layoff headlines and open roles are happening at the same time, in the same market.
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Where the openings are
Software developers and engineers led with 47,598 new openings, up 8.3% from August. Systems engineers came second, then tech support, data analysts, and DevOps engineers. 23 of the 30 highest-volume tech occupations gained postings.
AI skills show up everywhere. Active postings that ask for AI skills hit 349,821, up 32,327 in a single month and roughly 282% above May 2024. Postings with AI/ML job titles are a much smaller pool at 13,636, though that's nearly triple where it was in May 2024.
Put those two numbers side by side. More than 349,000 postings want AI skills, and only about 13,600 are AI jobs by title. Most of those postings are regular engineering jobs with AI added to the requirements.
AI is also showing up on the other side of the ledger. Challenger, Gray & Christmas attributed 3,961 of September's 43,281 announced job cuts to AI, about 9%. For the year, that's 120,136 cuts, around 21% of the total.
What I'd do with this
If you've used Copilot, Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, or Vertex AI on a real project, name the tool on your resume and say what it did. Postings are filtering on those skills, and most applicants leave them off.
CompTIA's release doesn't break out cloud roles, but systems engineer and DevOps both landed in the top 5. If your title says "cloud engineer," search those two titles as well. Same skills, bigger pool.
And apply now. Openings at a 3-year high with payrolls shrinking probably means slow hiring processes, so expect a few extra rounds and start earlier than feels necessary. Check posting dates too. A role that's been open for 60 days is often one nobody has budget to fill, so put your first applications into the fresh ones.
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