Hiring activity in the technology sector and the broader tech workforce took a step back in July, mirroring national labor market data that revealed a slowdown in job growth, according to analysis by CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the tech industry and workforce.

The tech industry shed an estimated 9,162 jobs last month, CompTIA's analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) #JobsReport data reveals.¹ Companies in the tech services and software development sector added an estimated 4,000 workers, which was offset with losses in telecommunications, cloud infrastructure and related sub-sectors. The total base of US tech industry employment stands at approximately 5.6 million workers.

Across the entire economy, tech occupations declined by 14,000 positions.² The unemployment rate for tech occupations edged down to 3.2% in July, compared with the national unemployment rate, which climbed to 4.3%.

"Although disappointing, the slowdown in hiring is about in line with expectations," said Tim Herbert, chief research officer, CompTIA. "Employers continue to weigh a range of factors in shorter term tech hiring while eyeing longer term growth strategies."

Active employer job postings for tech positions totaled more than 471,000 last month, including 176,324 categorized as new postings added in July.³ Demand was strongest for software developers and engineers, IT project managers, data analysts and scientists and tech support specialists, though totals in all occupation categories were down for the month.

The data indicates employers continue to focus on skills-based hiring. For the month 46% of active tech job postings did not specify a four-year degree requirement among candidates. Several key occupations recorded even higher percentages, including network support specialists (87%), IT support specialists (72%), network and systems administrators (52%) and database administrators (50%).

The "CompTIA Tech Jobs Report" is available at https://www.comptia.org/content/tech-jobs-report.