Report: Tech sector growing, but IT is hemorrhaging jobs

CompTIA's September jobs report reveals some grim statistics for IT pros: 142,000 jobs were lost last month. Tech sector growth slowed as well, but positions were still created rather than lost.

By Brandon Vigliarolo | October 11, 2016, 9:14 AM PST

It's not the best time to be an IT professional. Budgets are getting tight, cloud computing is making jobs more difficult, and now CompTIA reports that September was bleeding IT jobs at an alarming rate.

The CompTIA IT Employment Tracker for October reveals some interesting ups and downs. Before we dive in let's talk specifics: The report uses IT sector employment and IT occupation employment as two distinct terms.

IT occupation employment is clear: CompTIA uses this term to refer to anyone doing actual IT work. Programmers, CXOs, help desk techs, and network engineers are all in IT occupation employment.


The IT sector, on the other hand, is everyone involved in the tech world. Only 44 percent of IT sector jobs are IT occupations: The rest are marketing, finance, HR, and other positions.

The IT sector is growing according to CompTIA. IT occupations, on the other hand, are not.
Where the losses are

IT occupations across all industries faced a serious drop in September, with 142,000 jobs disappearing. That wipes away half of the job gains from August, when 205,000 IT occupation jobs were added.

The one upside to the news is the year-to-date numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is where CompTIA pulled data for the report. Job losses have been numerous but there's still been an overall gain of 17,000 positions since January.


CompTIA's report isn't specific about the particular jobs that were lost in

IT Budget Research: Where CXOs are placing their bets for 2017

Originally Published:

 

Sep 2016

For the calendar and fiscal year 2017, it looks like the majority of IT budgets are larger than last year. In an online survey conducted by Tech Pro Research in July, 61% of respondents said their company’s budget will increase. Most in that category said the increase would be small, between 1-10%, but that’s growth nonetheless.

Another important takeaway from this research is that, when creating their budget, companies are prioritizing the same issues as last year. Respondents said their top priorities are still improving efficiency and businesses processes, achieving network security, and increasing productivity through technology. Consequently, the top initiatives planned for the upcoming year are improving security, improving applications to better fit business processes, and improving the availability and performance of network infrastructure.

Other findings from this survey include the amount of tech spending that doesn’t come out of IT budgets, major IT challenges for the upcoming year, and how vendors can help companies with the budgetary process. To learn more, download the full report.