May
2025 Jobs Report
Methodology
To present the insights in this report, Dice used job posting data provided by Dice’s partner, Lightcast, which has a database of more than 1 billion current and historical job postings worldwide. Dice pulled data on May 7, 2025 and analyzed over 7 million tech job postings in the U.S. to gather our specific dataset, which we then filtered for “Information Technology” jobs that fall under “Full Time,” “Part Time” and “Flexible Hours.” We gathered the list of top employers in the “Industry Analysis” section by using the above criteria, with an additional filter for job postings that only derive from employer sites. The information in this report is a snapshot of tech job posting data as of May 7, 2025, and backward revisions to prior month’s data may occur from the sources used in this report.
How are Tech Jobs Faring in the Hiring Market?
The tech unemployment rate rose from 3.1% in March to 3.5% in April, even as the national unemployment rate remained steady at 4.2%. That’s the highest tech unemployment rate since August 2024, when it hit 3.4%, and a signal that employers are responding to the current economic uncertainty via layoffs and curtailing new hiring. Despite those worries, however, certain industries maintained a robust rate of tech hiring, including healthcare (up 37% month over month) and aerospace/defense (up 15% during the same period). Here’s the bottom line: no matter what’s happening in the broader economy, companies everywhere still need tech talent for a wide variety of functions, from building websites and apps to ensuring that AI is successfully integrated into every aspect of the tech stack.
Speaking of AI, the share of tech job postings requiring AI skills jumped from 31% to 36% between March and April; in relation to the total number of open tech jobs, that translates into a rise of 14%. Year-over-year, job postings with AI skill requirements rose 136%, hinting that employer hunger for AI specialist skills continues to accelerate. Given the economic uncertainty, executives are looking to AI to help with cost-cutting and efficiency, and they want employees who can help them accomplish that.
Meanwhile, other tech skills enjoying significant month-over-month gains in job postings included web servers (up 73%), product family engineering (up 59%), enterprise security (56%) and customer data management (46%).
Where are Tech Job Postings Concentrated?
As we mentioned above, healthcare and aerospace/defense enjoyed notable growth in job postings between March and April, at 37% and 15% respectively, followed by software and technology, which each experienced growth of 2%. However, industries such as education, manufacturing, consulting, retail and insurance all saw month-over-month declines, potentially due to employers adopting a wait-and-see approach to tariffs and other economic news.
Whatever the worries over the economy, tech hiring remained strong in the nation’s largest tech hubs. Tech job postings rose 15% month-over-month in San Francisco, 7% during the same period in Austin, 6% in Dallas, and 4% in San Jose, Los Angeles, and the New York City area. These hubs all offer a mix of massive organizations and energetic startups, which translates into a demand for many types of tech talent.
The larger states also seemed better at weathering any economic headwinds: tech job postings in California rose 6% month-over-month, followed by New York and Florida at 5%, Texas at 3%, and New Jersey at 1%. All of these states have spent years investing heavily in their respective tech communities, creating not only sizable reservoirs of tech talent, but also local need for that talent.
Who Are Companies Hiring Right Now?
As in previous months, companies want tech professionals who can build software, analyze data, and design (and iterate on) networks. Roles experiencing the strongest month-over-month growth between March and April included information security architects (up 232%), pre-sales solution architects (up 217%), IT auditors (up 196%), Salesforce engineers (up 162%) and mainframe engineers (up 152%). With organizations everywhere embracing change, tech professionals who know their way around the latest technologies have leverage in the current job market.
On a year-over-year basis, tech jobs with the biggest increases in job postings included Salesforce engineers (up 289%), artificial intelligence engineers (also up 289%), field application engineers (up 286%) and solution architects/principal consultants (up 262%). Salesforce is clearly critical to many organizations, which need talent that can keep that vendor’s software running effectively; employers also need tech pros who can build out infrastructure and applications, preferably while optimizing them for AI.
Long-term key skills remain centered around both technical and soft capabilities, with trustworthiness, cross-functional collaboration, CPT coding, observability, and operational efficiency all maintaining their positions near the top of the list of skills that have grown over the past 12 months. AI-related skills such as machine learning operations (up 153% year-over-year) and generative artificial intelligence (up 145%) also remain critical.
While it’s too soon to tell how tariffs and other trade issues might impact the economy throughout the rest of 2025, there are hints that companies are potentially putting themselves in a more defensive position through layoffs and cost-cutting. At the same time, though, key industries will continue to need tech professionals with all kinds of specializations to keep their strategies (and revenues) on track.
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