Hiring for IT Pros Slows in February
IT Pro unemployment rate is 5.4% - the second month in a row it is higher than the US National Unemployment rate
Park City – UT – e-janco.com – Janco reports terminations exceeded hiring for IT Professionals in the last half of 2024. The unemployment rate for IT Pros spiked at 5.7% in January and dripped slightly in February to 5.4%.
The CEO of Janco, M. Victor Janulaitis said, “There continues to be uncertainty in the outlook for IT initiatives. A preliminary impact of DOGE is being felt as many contracts for IT Professionals have been put on hold and government IT pros do not have a clear picture of what the future holds for them. The number of unemployed IT professionals dropped slightly in February to 148K from 152K in January.”
He added, “The latest data from the BLS shows the job market for IT professionals shrank by 9,100 positions in the first two months of 2025. The fluctuations in the US stock markets and the feeling by some economic forecasters that we are in a recession or soon to be in one is slowing down hiring efforts in many enterprises. Questions like - What will the impact of tariffs be? How long will it take for inflation to be brought under control? Will the Congress pass the Trump tax cuts? Will the Ukraine and Middle East wars be stopped? All of these are issues that enterprises are facing, is impacting the pace of hiring of IT Pros.”
The CEO stated “From our interviews with over 100 CFOs and CIOs, we found that the start of the new administration continues to be viewed as positive. They do feel there is a good chance there will be an economic turndown in the second or third quarter of 2025. However, it will be not deep or long in duration.” He added, “IT Pros who were unemployed last month found jobs more quickly than was anticipated as CIOs rushed to fill open positions.”
Also, he said, “The unemployment rate for IT Professionals is 5.4% which is higher than the overall national unemployment rate of 4.1%. The full impact of the DOGE initiatives has not been felt as of yet. However, over the past several quarters much of the overall job growth was in the government sectors of the economy. With the new administration that will not be the case in the future.”
Janulaitis stated, “From our interviews, we have found hiring and job growth continues to be in 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 continues to halt the growth of entry-level positions within IT, especially in customer service, internal reporting, telecommunications, and hosting automation. C-level executives continue to be focused on eliminating “non-essential” managers, staff, and services. Experienced coders and developers have limited opportunities with legacy applications. 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 4.1 million jobs for IT Professionals in the US. Economic uncertainty continues to hurt overall IT hiring. Large high-tech firms continue to focus on improving bottom lines and justify investments in AI and LLM solutions.”
Janco’s current forecast is that the IT job market will grow slightly in FY 2025 – between 20k to 40k.
25-year History of IT Job Market Size
Janco’s analysis of the IT job market is based on current BLS data, hiring trends monitored by Janco, budgets for IT initiatives in companies Janco monitors, and its proprietary forecasting model.
Janco is an international consulting firm that follows issues that concern CIOs and CFOs and publishes a series of IT and business infrastructure HandiGuides® and Templates including detailed IT Job Descriptions, IT Infrastructure, Policies and Procedures, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Template, Security Template, and its semi-annual IT Salary Survey.
Questions asked:
1. Do you think DOGE actions will hurt private-sector IT hiring as well as government IT hiring?
The Doge effort will add to the job market for legacy IT Pros. Few, if any of the govt IT Pros has experience with AI, Blockchain, and e-commerce. IT Pros will face competition from these individuals and in that sector of the IT Job Market, we believe that unemployment rates will rise.
2. Do you think the IT unemployment rate is likely to increase once the BLS data lag catches up to DOGE actions?
I think we have seen some of that already with the adjustments the BLS made in its last data release.
3.Government IT has been a hiring leader, but under Trump that’s unlikely to be the case. C-level executives are still viewing the new administration as positive, though - is that because they’re hoping to attract talent who leave government employ? How are they retaining positivity despite belief that there’s going to be an economic downturn?
The impact of Trump saying there could be a recession will put pressure on private sector enterprises to keep costs down. After that statement, we are in the process of revising our forecast for IT Job Market growth. This may be the third year in a row where the IT Job Market shrinks.