US employers hired more than 225,000 IT workers in June, trade group says

Employers added an estimated 227,000 jobs in the IT sphere in June, according to a new analysis of Labor Department data, indicating a possible bright spot for tech workers amid the nation's dire unemployment situation.

The nonprofit tech industry trade group CompTIA said in an analysis Tuesday that while overall tech industry employment declined by some 5,600 jobs in June, IT jobs across all sectors increased by an estimated 227,000 positions last month.

The researchers also noted the trend that tech sector occupation employment increased five out of six months in the first half of 2020. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for all IT occupations was 4.3% for June, researchers said, compared to the national rate of 11.1%.

"The latest employment data for tech was generally positive, with continuing signs of momentum," Tim Herbert, the executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA, said in a statement.

"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," he added.  Some of the most notable job gains in the tech industry last month occurred in tech manufacturing, which saw a net increase of 7,300 jobs. Data processing, hosting and related services saw an increase of 5,600 jobs and other information service categories -- which includes search engines and portals -- saw an increase of 2,000 jobs last month, according to the analysis.

IT services and custom software development saw a loss of 20,400 positions last month, with Herbert noting that this could be because the sector "is dominated by small firms" that "tend to be more sensitive to disruption in customer spending."

"As the broad small business market recovers, we expect hiring will resume among IT services and customer software development firms," Herbert said.

Finally, the researchers noted some forward-looking indicators of demand for tech talent -- saying that there were approximately 263,000 job postings in June, an increase of 42,000 postings compared to the previous month. The most in-demand tech occupations include software and application developers (with 82,800 job postings) and IT support specialists (22,000 job postings).