IT Employment Trending Up; Data, Cybersecurity Skills in Demand

IT workers proved their worth in the first half of 2020, helping their organizations set up their workforces for remote work and an alternate way of doing business and going to market. But the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that some of these workers lost their jobs in IT over the course of 2020. IT jobs across industries saw declines in July, August, and September.

Now that trend has been turned around for October, according to industry organization CompTIA. What's more, the three other IT employment metrics tracked by CompTIA are also trending up at the same time.

"This is the first time all four core metrics we track moved in a positive direction since February," said Tim Herbert, executive VP of research and market intelligence at CompTIA, in an interview with InformationWeek. That sound you hear is a collective sigh of relief after a year of surprises, fast pivots, and a huge measure of uncertainty for IT organizations, IT pros, and the economy as a whole.

The four employment metrics tracked by CompTIA are IT sector (tech company) employment, IT occupation employment (IT jobs across all industry sectors), the unemployment rate for IT occupations, and employer job posting for new IT hires. CompTIA defines IT sector jobs as any jobs, technical or not, at technology companies such as Microsoft, HPE, or Google. CompTIA defines IT occupation jobs as IT jobs within any non-tech employer, for instance, the IT jobs within Walmart or John Deere or Penn Medicine.

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