Employment in tech occupations grew 12% YoY to a record 6.39M in November 2022, as workers eye banking, retail, health care, and manufacturing amid tech layoffs
Most tech jobs are now in mainstream industries like health care, banking and retail, which are increasingly in need of workers with digital skills. Tweets: @dealbook , @stevelohr , @scottlincicome , @andrenaleen , @nytimestech , @nytimestech , @nytimestech , @chiefmartec , @dialogcrm , @carnage4life , and @stevelohr Tweets: @dealbook : The employment shake-up in the tech industry has accelerated a shift of professionals looking beyond the most well-known employers. Now many tech jobs are in mainstream industries like health care and banking, which need workers with digital skills. https://www.nytimes.com/... Steve Lohr / @stevelohr : The big picture on tech jobs — across the economy, beyond the Silicon Valley belt-tightening. Not immune to a weakening economy, but remarkably resilient. w/ @trippmickle https://www.nytimes.com/... Scott Lincicome / @scottlincicome : “In a reordering of the market for tech workers, more technology professionals are looking beyond the well-known Big Tech employers to companies in many other industries that increasingly offer challenging opportunities.” https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Andrei Taranchenko / @andrenaleen : This is great news. Big Tech has been hogging new engineers who did nothing useful - stealing our data, mostly. Actual industries have been starved of tech talent for years, while tech bros, awash in easy cash, didn't know what to do with it. https://www.nytimes.com/... @nytimestech : The tech industry's retrenchment is making employment in other industry's like finance and retail more appealing to engineers. https://www.nytimes.com/... @nytimestech : “If this transition redeploys skilled tech workers to other sectors of the economy, that may very well be a healthy development,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA. https://www.nytimes.com/... @nytimestech : The employment shake-up in the tech industry has accelerated a shift of professionals looking beyond the most well-known employers. Now many tech jobs are in mainstream industries like health care and banking, which need workers with digital skills. https://www.nytimes.com/... Scott Brinker / @chiefmartec : Every company is becoming a “software company”... As Silicon Valley Retrenches, a Tech Talent Shift Accelerates https://www.nytimes.com/... #martech @dialogcrm : “There have been ups and downs, but job growth in tech occupations has nearly doubled since 2000, when 3.33 million Americans were employed in tech occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.” https://www.nytimes.com/... @carnage4life : More people are creating software as their jobs than ever before. But we're going to see fewer people in their mid-thirties who are a director at FAANG with a net worth of $2.5M wondering why they can't afford a $10M house. https://www.nytimes.com/... Steve Lohr / @stevelohr : Silicon Valley has been cutting. But tech jobs, across the economy, have increased this year. Why? Businesses in every industry are increasingly digital. They need tech talent. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The talent flow out of big tech began before the layoffs peaked: by September 2022, Wall Street firms were already winning engineers as Silicon Valley hiring freezes took hold. This data point extends that story beyond finance — total tech-occupation employment hit a record 6.39M even as tech companies cut, because banking, retail, health care, and manufacturing are absorbing the workers.
The follow-on coverage confirms the pattern held rather than reversed: layoffs continued through 2024 at over 200 companies, and re-entry got harder for some — even experienced technical workers reported trouble getting hired back, pushing more of them toward non-tech employers.
First-order effects
- Laid-off tech workers immediately gain a wider set of landing spots: mainstream industries that need digital skills are hiring at the same moment tech companies are cutting.
- Banks, retailers, hospitals, and manufacturers get direct access to a deeper pool of experienced engineers and product people than they could reach when FAANG-scale compensation dominated.
Second-order effects
- Competition for digital talent shifts downstream: non-tech employers must now bid against each other for the same displaced workers, while AI-specialist salaries running 12% above peers shows the premium concentrating in scarce skills rather than employer brand.
- Big Tech loses its role as the default first employer for tech talent, weakening the network effects — alumni networks, vendor ecosystems, wage benchmarks — that were built around it.
Third-order effects
- If the diffusion continues, 'the tech industry' and 'tech companies' fully decouple: digital work becomes a function inside every sector, and labor-market power migrates from platform employers to whichever industries are digitizing fastest.
- A structural consequence worth flagging as uncertain: with fewer workers concentrated in a handful of firms, both wage-setting dynamics and any future regulation of tech labor would have to target sectors, not just the usual Big Tech names.
The trend: Tech employment is diffusing out of tech companies into the broader economy, with mainstream industries becoming the primary absorber of digital-skills labor during layoff cycles.