Technology employment is growing despite tech sector layoffs - HR Dive

Splendid news from HR Dive: technology occupation employment grew by 86,000 workers in August, according to CompTIA's analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. CompTIA is a computing industry trade body, which makes this roughly the equivalent of the Tobacco Manufacturers' Association reporting that smoking is up and calling it a growth sector. And then the headline does the heavy lifting: technology employment is growing *despite* tech sector layoffs. Three words, one subclause, one entire rhetorical trick — the layoffs happen to one population, the growth is measured in another, and 'despite' is the glue holding them in the same sentence.

Then there's the demand side: more than 320,000 active job postings requiring AI-related skills in August, a 4.5% month-over-month increase, courtesy of CompTIA's analysis of Lightcast data. A posting is not a hire. A posting is a wish with a salary band attached, sometimes a ghost, occasionally the same wish copy-pasted by six staffing agencies who have found your CV and are very keen to 'align on your journey'. Still, 4.5% is 4.5%, and if you annualise a single month hard enough it becomes a trend, then a narrative, then a keynote with a slide that says 'inflection point'.

Worth noting that this is the very same August we flagged last week, when Challenger, Gray & Christmas were counting bodies and finding AI the leading stated reason for the cull. Two trade bodies, one month, two headlines, both technically true. Whether you are told tech is booming or bleeding depends mostly on which of them has a member base to flatter. The 86,000 are real, presumably, and so are the postings — but nothing in the release says anyone was hired, which is the only number that would have required a follow-up question.