Dive Brief:
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Demand for tech roles dipped slightly last month as employers reel from a year of priority shifts and economic headwinds, according to a CompTIA review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data published Friday.
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Employers cut nearly 7,000 technology jobs across all sectors, according to the report — a smaller contraction compared with the 134,000 lost jobs in the previous set of official data. Tech industry hiring remained "essentially flat," according to the IT trade group, with companies reducing about 1,461 positions last month.
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Despite the pullback in tech hiring, unemployment among IT professions recovered from the previous report, dipping to 3.3% from 4%.
Dive Insight:
Shifts in technology priorities sent ripples through IT hiring strategies in 2025 as CIOs and other IT chiefs adjusted their playbooks. Businesses ended the year in a holding pattern amid calls for greater ROI on earlier AI investments.
“Stuck is a fitting characterization for a labor market where employers and workers face uncertainty on so many fronts,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA, in a release accompanying the report.
But the status quo in the broader hiring market is unlikely to remain for much longer, according to Laura Ullrich, director of economic research at Indeed's Hiring Lab.
"A low-hire/low-fire environment can’t last forever in a growing economy," said Ullrich in an email. "While a long-stagnant labor market might not be as directly alarming as an obviously broken one, it can still feel quite broken for many job seekers."
Indeed's analysis of the data found a concentration of job listings in a handful of specific sectors, especially healthcare. Postings for software development and data and analytics roles have yet to return to their 2020 levels despite growth spikes in 2022.
Demand for AI skills among candidates remained high even as hiring intent cooled, according to CompTIA. The volume of open job listings that cite AI skills more than doubled year over year, the report found.
More businesses are expected to look inward to meet the demand for AI expertise, analysts told CIO Dive. But employee training is lagging behind those ambitions, as just one-third of workers say their employers provide training in AI, according to a Jobs for the Future survey. More than half of workers say they're unprepared to use the technology.
