Number of unemployed IT Pros fell to 96,000 versus 121,000 last month

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Unemployment rate for IT Pros improves to 3.6% versus 4.3% last month

Current forecast is that the IT job market may grow slightly in CY 2024

Park City - UT - e-janco.com - Janco reports the overall unemployment rate for IT pros in February improved to 3.6% from 4.3% in February. In Q1 of 2024 the IT job market grew by 2,800 versus a loss of 1,500 jobs in Q1 of 2023. This data implies hiring IT Pros could be better in 2024 than 2023 which saw the IT job market shrink by 48,600 jobs.

Latest YTD IT job market data - IT job Market Growth in Q1 2024 out performs Q1 2023

Janco's current forecast is that the IT job market may grow slightly in CY 2024. This is based on current BLS data, hiring trends monitored by Janco, budgets for IT initiatives in companies Janco monitors, and its proprietary forecasting model.

IT Job Market - April 2024

There has been a major shift in the creation of new IT Jobs - AI and economic slowing are the drivers. The IT Job Market shrank by 48,600 jobs in CY 2023.

Number unemployed Information individuals
Many IT Pros who lost thier jobs earlier found positions in March and drove the IT unemployment rate down.

Change In IT Job Market Size - March 2024

25,900 IT Jobs have been added in the last 12 months and 2,800 jobs added in the last 3 months.

The CEO of Janco, M. Victor Janulaitis said, “The unemployment rate for IT Professionals improved to 3.6% from 4.3% in February. The number of unemployed IT Pros fell to 96,000 from 121,000. Many of the IT pros that were unemployed in the last 3 months found jobs. The number of unfilled positions is about equal to the number of unemployed IT Pros. There still is a skills miss match as positions continue to go unfilled. IT Pros with AI skills and experience remain in high demand."

The CEO added, “CIOs for large enterprises are looking for staff with experience with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Large Language Models (LLM), and Machine Learning (ML). Salaries for those professionals are well into the low six figures. Salaries for management positions with AI skills have moved higher and are in the $155K to $260K range. Experienced managers and developers in demand are getting offers in the $135K to $185K range. “
Janulaitis stated, “From our interviews, we have found that most of the hiring and job growth is small to mid-sized enterprises. Many of the larger firms continue to be focused on improvements in productivity and replacing lower-level skills with AI applications. AI is slowing the growth of entry-level positions within IT, especially in customer service, internal reporting, telecommunications, and hosting automation. C-level executives are focusing on eliminating “non-essential” managers, staff, and services. Experienced coders and developers still have limited opportunities. The highest demand continues to be for AI, security professionals, new technology programmers, and Internet processing IT Pros.“

The CEO added, “According to the latest BLS data analyzed, there are now approximately 4.18 million jobs for IT Professionals in the US. Layoffs at big tech companies continued to hurt overall IT hiring. In the Q1 of 2024 layoffs occurred at SAP, IBM, CISCO, Dell, Xerox, PayPal, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and eBay to mention a few. Troubling economic conditions are still there even with the positive jobs data from the BLS. IT will continue to be a target for productivity improvements as it is a target with mean compensation of $100K for IT Pros.”

The BLS adjusted the number of IT jobs initially reported for January and February. The net result was that last month they reported the net number of job created YTD was 2,400. After the adjustments and the new jobs created the YTD number of jobs created was 2,800. A net increase of 400 jobs. Adjustments of this type are consistently occurring with the BLS data.