August 2026
Jobs ReportReleased September 2026
How are tech jobs faring in the hiring market?
Tech job postings decreased 2% month-over-month in August. Year-over-year, postings are up 18% compared to August 2025, keeping the annual trend solidly positive even as the monthly pace eased.
AI and machine learning tech postings grew 101% year-over-year (August 2026 vs. August 2025), more than five times the 18% growth rate for tech postings overall. AI hiring continues to expand well beyond narrowly defined AI roles, a pattern reflected in the job title and skills trends below.
Where are tech job postings concentrated?
Retail posted the largest month-over-month industry gain in August, with tech job postings up 18%. That growth tracks with broader reporting on retail’s push toward AI-driven pricing, inventory, and customer service systems, work that draws on the same predictive analytics, IoT, and data pipeline skills that grew this month (see below). Consulting (+7%), Finance/banking (+6%), Software (+5%), and Manufacturing (+4%) also posted month-over-month gains.
Year-over-year, Manufacturing, Software, Consulting, Technology, and Retail all grew more than 30%, suggesting tech hiring gains are spreading across industries building out AI-driven operations rather than concentrating in tech-native companies alone.
Regional hiring patterns show continued recovery
Half of the top 10 states by tech hiring volume grew month-over-month in August, led by Illinois (+11%) and California (+9%).
Year-over-year, every state except North Carolina (flat) grew, led by Maryland and New York.
Illinois’ gain fits independent data ranking Chicago third nationally for AI job posting growth, behind only San Francisco and New York, as finance, healthcare, and education employers build AI capabilities beyond the region’s traditional tech base. California’s gain reflects the state’s continued concentration of machine learning and AI engineering roles, centered in San Francisco and San Jose.
Metro areas showed a similar split between short-term softening and longer-term growth. San Francisco and San Jose posted the strongest combined growth of any metro, reflecting the Bay Area’s outsized share of machine learning and AI engineering postings.
Who are companies hiring right now?
Job titles posting month-over-month growth above 150% in August include AI Product Managers, Application Systems Analysts, SAP SuccessFactors Managers, SAP EWM Consultants, and Lead Solution Architects. These cluster around two themes: AI product ownership paired with the enterprise architecture work that supports it (Application Systems Analysts, Lead Solution Architects), and ERP modernization within SAP’s HR platform (SuccessFactors) and warehouse/supply chain platform (EWM). The SAP titles line up with the Manufacturing and Retail gains noted above, both of which rely on SAP for HR and logistics.
Month-over-month skills growth
Several of these skills form a data pipeline for AI systems: Data Acquisition and Data Preprocessing feed Predictive Analytics models, and Experimentation covers the testing needed to validate models before production. IoT fits the same pattern from the device side, and lines up with the Retail and Manufacturing gains noted above, both sectors reliant on connected devices for inventory and operations data. Design Thinking’s growth matches the AI Product Manager title growth above, since AI product teams need user-centered design methods to make those tools usable. Trustworthiness and Problem Management point to the governance and reliability side of the same rollout: Trustworthiness tracks with the Responsible AI theme below, and Problem Management is a standard IT service discipline that grows more important as organizations run more AI tooling in production.
Year-over-year skills growth (200%+)
Responsible AI, AI Agents, Agentic AI, and Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure form a cluster seen in recent months’ reports, tracking the shift from assistive AI tools toward more autonomous systems. Enterprise Integration and Database Software reflect the work of connecting those systems to existing infrastructure, while Endpoint Management points to the device and security layer needed to run them at scale.
Product Family Engineering, Engineering Practices, and Project Stakeholders round out the list with organizational and process-discipline skills, a pattern in recent reports where AI adoption coincides with growth in change-management and governance skills alongside the technical AI skills themselves.
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 3 billion current and historical job postings worldwide. Dice pulled data on September 3, 2026 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. This report is based entirely on real-time job posting data and is independent of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment reports.
This Dice report provides timely labor market insights derived directly from employer hiring activity rather than survey-based employment statistics. The information in this report is a snapshot of tech job posting data as of September 3, 2026, and backward revisions to prior month’s data may occur from the sources used in this report.
Deep Dive Into AI Hiring, check out our 2026 AI Talent Field Manual
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