Tech Companies May Be Laying Off Employees, But Tech Workers Are Still In Demand
The last six months of labor headlines have been a switcheroo for anyone following the tech industry. We’ve gone from heady reports of companies competing to buy tech talent and onboarding hundreds of new employees every week to almost daily reports of the latest layoffs. Perhaps the greatest bubble indicator was that in 2021, there were more job postings for tech recruiters than software engineers. According to layoffs.fyi, there have been over 130,000 tech layoffs this year. LinkedIn has been tracking layoffs: 29 companies announced layoffs in the first three weeks of November, including Amazon and Meta letting go of over 10,000 staff each, Zendesk cutting its workforce by 5%, and Cisco cutting more than 4,100 jobs; tech is no longer the safe harbor in a storm.
However, looking beyond the tech industry and at the overall tech labor market, the signs are a little less doom and gloom. 207,000 additional tech jobs were created in October 2022, the 23rd straight month of job growth. The tech industry has actually created 193,000 jobs in 2022, and there are currently 317,000 open job listings for technology roles, although this is down from a peak of approximately 400,000 opens roles at the height of the labor crunch in spring of this year. The most popular open role? Software engineer, with over 80,000 open roles.
