Did you know U.S. IT Job Market Shrinks—AI Taking Over Entry-Level Roles, Leaving Thousands Unemployed!
According to a new report by Janco Associates, many Information
Technology (IT) experts in the United States are unemployed because the
job market has shrunk by 22,300 positions last year. This is the second
year of decline of IT jobs, with about 70,900 IT jobs being eliminated
in the past two years. There has only been a 1.87% increase in median
salaries of IT pros, amidst the inflation rate being 2.9%. The report
was based on official data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which
found that there was a loss of 5,700 positions in the IT job market in
December 2024 alone. Security professionals are the most in-demand IT
position right now.
In 2023, there was a loss of 48,600 IT
workers in the IT job market which shows that decline was somewhat
slower in 2024. In the US, the national average for unemployment rate is
4.1% while the unemployment rate among IT professionals is 3.9% with
more than 4.16 million Americans working in IT fields.
Another report by Layoffs.fyi found out that 2,000 IT companies laid off 270,000 employees in 2023 while 152,000 employees were laid off by 546 tech companies (Tesla, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, Amazon, Intel and others) in 2024.
The estimates by Janco shows that the IT job market is going to shrink in the next upcoming months, while most small to mid-sized companies are hiring new individuals and providing more jobs. The large enterprises are more focused on AI adoption and are planning to replace low skill workers with AI for increased productivity. AI is increasingly replacing entry-level positions in the IT sector. The AI experts, technology programmers, security professionals and Internet Processing IT professionals are the only ones who were being actively sought. 63 of the companies laid off 6,300 employees in the beginning of 2023 and 1,356 of them were laid off in 2024.