IT Job Market shrinks by 13K jobs in Q1
IT job market shrank by 13,700 jobs in the first quarter of 2023
Layoffs and economic uncertainty drove CIOs and CFOs to slow IT Hiring
Janco reports that in the first quarter of 2023, the IT job market lost 13,700 jobs. That is in sharp contrast with 51K jobs that were created in Q1 of 2022. Layoffs by the big tech companies including Accenture (39,000), Microsoft (2,700), Meta (11,000), and Alphabet (12,000) have resulted in over 158,000 tech workers that have been terminated in the first quarter. The tech centers of San Francisco and Seattle get the headlines, but these reductions in the number of IT Pros employed are occurring nationwide.
The growth of the IT job market stopped with a decline of 2,600 jobs in January and 11,600 jobs in February. In March the IT job market rebounded with 500 jobs added. The three-month moving average of IT job market growth went negative in February and moved up in the positive range in March. Currently, there is an excess of 145K unfilled jobs for IT Pros due to a lack of qualified candidates.
The CEO of Janco, M. Victor Janulaitis said, “Based on our analysis, the IT job market and opportunities for IT professionals are limited but exist for experienced individuals. Layoffs, for the most part, did not hit developers. In the first quarter. The big losers were telecommunications losing 4,500 jobs, hosting and cloud providers losing 6,100 jobs, and content providers another 1,500 jobs. The jobs lost were in data center operations, administrative and HR roles related to recruiting, and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). Some roles, especially in telecommunications and data center operations are being automated and eliminated. Driving this is, CIOs and CFOs who are looking to improve the productivity of IT by automating processes and reporting where possible. They are focusing on eliminating “non-essential” managers and staff. Experienced coders and developers still have opportunities. The highest demand continues to be for security professionals, programmers, and blockchain processing IT Pros. Currently, there are over 145K unfilled jobs.”
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