Recession Hits IT - IT Job Market Shrinks - 106,000 IT Pros are unemployed

Park City – UT – e-janco.com – Janco reports that the job market for IT Pros took a turn for the worse with 106,000 unemployed in October – at the same time there are almost 130K unfilled open requisitions for IT Professionals. In July there were 64K unemployed IT Pros, currently, there are 106K – a 65% increase. On the bright side, October showed an increase of 7,300 jobs despite a YTD loss of 9,300 jobs. Janco will be publishing its full set of findings on Substack (https://itmanager.substack.com/).

The BLS adjusted the number of jobs initially added in August (added 600 jobs) and September (added 1,200 jobs).

"Based on our analysis, the IT job market and opportunities for IT professionals are poor at best. In the past twelve months, telecommunications lost 23,400 jobs, content providers lost 9,300 jobs, and other information services lost 10,300 jobs. Gainers in the last three months, computer system designers gained 36,000 jobs, and hosting providers gained 14,200. Currently, there are almost 130K unfilled jobs with over 106K unemployed IT Pros – a skills mismatch."

The CEO added, "Experienced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning IT Professionals are in high demand. Salaries for those professionals are well into the low six figures. Salaries for management positions with AI skills are in the $150K to $250K range. Experienced managers and developers are getting offers in the $125K to $165K range."

Also,"AI is slowing the growth of many entry-level positions within IT, especially in customer service, telecommunications, and hosting automation. CIOs and CFOs are looking to improve the productivity of IT by automating processes and reporting where possible. They are focusing on eliminating "non-essential" managers, staff, and services. Experienced coders and developers still have opportunities. The highest demand continues to be for AI, security professionals, programmers, and blockchain processing IT Pros. This in turn is reducing demand for many entry-level positions in IT."

Janulaitis expanded, "AI is displacing some IT Pros and eliminating some entry-level positions as tools for AI are enhanced in ChatGPT, Natural language procession (NLP), TensorFlow (Google), Image Processing, PyTorch (Facebook), generative AI content creation, Midjourney, AI chatbot, Model tuning, and Sable Diffusion." (see https://itmanager.substack.com/p/it-pros-with-ai-skills-in-high-demand)

He said, "There continues to be a general belief there will be an economic downturn by many CIOs and CFOs. This is impacting all decisions around hiring new IT Pros and technology-related expenditures. This has impacted the salaries of IT Pros (2023 Mid-Year Salary Survey) with a major impact on the compensation of IT Executives."

The CEO added, "According to the latest BLS data analyzed, there are now just under 4.19 million jobs for IT Professionals in the US. Layoffs at big tech companies continue to hurt overall IT hiring. CIOs are looking at a troubling economic climate and are evaluating the need for increased headcounts based on the technological requirements of their specific business operations."

With this as a background, Janco revised its forecasts for a slight shrinking of the IT Job Market in 2023 by just under 10K. However, that number could exceed the losses of 2020 if there is more downward pressure on the US economy.

To assist in managing these troubled times, Janco has just released an update to its CIO Management Tool Kit. See https://e-janco.com/it-management-toolkit.html. This tool kit has been updated to reflect changes to the IT Infrastructure caused by AI, compliance mandates, and the current economic environment - including WFH and Cloud processing. It meets all the mandated security requirements and best practices.

Janco is an international consulting firm that follows issues that concern CIOs and CFOs and publishes a series of IT and business infrastructure HandiGuides® and Templates including detailed IT Job Descriptions, IT Infrastructure, Policies and Procedures, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Template, Security Template, and its semi-annual IT Salary Survey.