The tech unemployment rate hit 2.3 percent in December, lower than the national unemployment rate of 3.7 percent. Companies are clearly still hungry for tech talent despite executives’ omnipresent fears of recession and the massive layoffs that shook the tech industry throughout 2023.
Last month, the tech industry also enjoyed a net increase of 12,922 jobs, the biggest such gain since April, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data analyzed by CompTIA. “Tech employment remains on solid footing,” Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA, wrote in a statement accompanying the data. “Despite the ongoing pattern of mixed signals in the labor market tracking data, the optimistic outlook continues to hold.”
Key sectors such as technology services and software development, cloud infrastructure and related positions, and tech manufacturing all saw significant job increases.
In-demand tech jobs saw significant salary increases in the second half of 2023, according to the End of Year Pay Report from levels.fyi, a website that crowdsources tech compensation data. Software and hardware engineers, software engineering managers, and technical program managers enjoyed median pay increases of at least 3 percent between the two halves of the year.
And according to a report from consulting firm McKinsey, certain technology categories are primed to grow explosively over the next few years, including (but not limited to):
- Applied AI
- Next-generation software development
- Cloud and edge computing
- Trust architectures and digital identity
- Future of mobility
If you’re a developer or engineer, ‘next-generation software development’ includes:
- Low- and no-code platforms
- Infrastructure-as-Code
- A.I.-generated code and A.I.-based testing
- Microservices and APIs
- Automated code review
In other words, there’s a good deal of opportunity out there for tech professionals with all kinds of specializations; if you keep your skills up-to-date, chances are good that you can find a company that aligns with your career goals and values, even if they’re not necessarily in the tech industry. As tech evolves and redefines itself, the trick is to never stop learning.
