Jan–Oct 2022

Dice Tech Job Report

Tech Hiring Trends by Location, Industry, Role and Skill

Executive Summary

Welcome to the 9th edition of the Dice Tech Job Report. The tech hiring space is always changing, requiring diligent monitoring of hiring trends across organizations and industries nationwide. To help make sense of the news and latest trends in tech hiring, we analyzed more than 7 million tech jobs posted in the U.S. between January and October of 2021 and 2022. In the following pages, you’ll learn about the trends we saw play out in 2022 and what we’re expecting in 2023.

Demand for tech talent, despite news of layoffs and hiring freezes this year, remains high. Although 85,000 workers in the tech sector have reportedly been laid off, more than 375,000 tech jobs remain unfilled. As this report demonstrates, demand across the U.S. continues to grow, especially in established industries like healthcare, aerospace and finance. Organizations in these industries need to fill a variety of engineering and developer roles... leading to opportunity for those technology professionals with the skills.

Tech job postings are up 25% year-over-year (Jan-Oct 2021 vs. Jan-Oct 2022), and demand is looking even stronger than it did in 2019. Though we’ve seen fluctuations month-to-month in 2022, these are in line with historical trends, including the 3% increase in job postings from September to October. Moving into the end of the year, trends forecast a decrease in job postings during the holiday months, followed by a jump in January. These trends could be impacted by a potential economic recession (as evidenced in the trend change when comparing the first half of 2022 to the second half), although tech job demand avoided major disruption in the most recent downturn (2020).

In the following pages, we break down the data by location, industry, occupation and tech skill to give you a detailed look at factors that impact your tech job hunt. Check out the key takeaways below for what we learned from the data in 2022 and what to expect in 2023. Dig into each detailed area of the report to learn more!

Methodology

To present the insights in this report, Dice used job posting data provided by Dice’s partner, Lightcast (formerly known as Emsi Burning Glass), which has a database of more than 1 billion current and historical job postings worldwide. Dice pulled data on November 4, 2022 and analyzed over 7 million tech job postings in the U.S. to gather our specific dataset, which we then filtered for “Information Technology” jobs that fall under “Full Time,” “Part Time” and “Flexible Hours.” We gathered the list of top employers in the “Industry Analysis” section by using the above criteria, with an additional filter for job postings that only derive from employer sites. The information in this report is a snapshot of tech job posting data as of November 4, 2022, and backward revisions to prior month’s data may occur from the sources used in this report.

Key Takeaways

Demand for tech talent remains strong.

Although 85,000 workers in the U.S. tech sector have reportedly been laid off this year (as of late November), more than 375,000 tech jobs remain unfilled. Demand for tech talent has fluctuated between January and October 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, but U.S. tech job postings are up 25% and look even stronger than in 2019, a recent high-water mark. Organizations always need technology professionals for critical functions, even as they adjust their overall workforces to meet the economic moment.

Established industries show no signs of slowing on tech hiring.

Employers in the healthcare, aerospace, finance and consulting industries have hired massive numbers of tech professionals to support innovation efforts in 2022, and that has continued into Q4. Despite recent layoffs and a potential recession, 52% of tech professionals are likely to change employers in the next year. Tech professionals are confident in their skills and have some wiggle room to negotiate for what they want.

Texas narrows the gap in its competition with California, the top competitor for tech talent.

With five of the top 25 cities by tech job postings (Austin, Houston, Dallas, Plano and San Antonio), and nearly 200,000 job postings ahead of New York (#3 in top U.S. cities for tech job postings), Texas remains a key player in terms of tech presence and tech job growth, which is great news for local tech professionals (or those looking to make a move to the Lone Star State).

Engineers are in high demand across industries and across the U.S.

As organizations continue to focus on digital transformation initiatives, they are also building their core tech teams to help run their basic business operations — and both aspects require tech-savvy engineers. For example, job postings for software development engineer (+139.5%) and back-end engineers (+121.5%) have more than doubled compared to 2021. In order to take advantage of that demand, tech professionals need to put effort into mastering their core skills.

Demand for tech talent remains strong.

Although 85,000 workers in the U.S. tech sector have reportedly been laid off this year (as of October 31), more than 375,000 tech jobs remain unfilled. Demand for tech talent has fluctuated between January and October 2022 compared to the same period in 2021, but U.S. tech job postings are up 25% and look even stronger than in 2019, a recent high-water mark. Organizations always need technology professionals for critical functions, even as they adjust their overall workforces to meet the economic moment.

Established industries show no signs of slowing on tech hiring.

Employers in the healthcare, aerospace, finance and consulting industries have hired massive numbers of tech professionals to support innovation efforts in 2022, and that has continued into Q4. Despite recent layoffs and a potential recession, 52% of tech professionals are likely to change employers in the next year. Tech professionals are confident in their skills and have some wiggle room to negotiate for what they want.

Texas narrows the gap in its competition with California, the top competitor for tech talent.

With five of the top 25 cities by tech job postings (Austin, Houston, Dallas, Plano and San Antonio), and nearly 200,000 job postings ahead of New York (#3 in top U.S. cities for tech job postings), Texas remains a key player in terms of tech presence and tech job growth, which is great news for local tech professionals (or those looking to make a move to the Lone Star State).

Engineers are in high demand across industries and across the U.S.

As organizations continue to focus on digital transformation initiatives, they are also building their core tech teams to help run their basic business operations — and both aspects require tech-savvy engineers. For example, job postings for software development engineer (+139.5%) and back-end engineers (+121.5%) have more than doubled compared to 2021. In order to take advantage of that demand, tech professionals need to put effort into mastering their core skills.