Recruiters say hiring in some tech sectors is holding firm; Indeed.com: US developer job postings are up 120% on an early 2020 pre-coronavirus pandemic baseline
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Context & Ripple Effects
The June 2022 data lands mid-arc: after tech companies slashed openings by roughly 20% in spring 2020 (the pandemic hiring freeze), demand snapped back so hard that by February 2022 tech-worker unemployment sat at 1.7% — 0.2% for cybersecurity — against 4% economy-wide (that recruitment crunch).
What makes the Indeed figure notable is its timing: it shows developer postings up 120% on the pre-pandemic baseline just as layoff announcements were starting to dominate headlines. The follow-on coverage vindicates the split — tech occupations hit a record 6.39M jobs in November 2022 even during the layoff wave (record employment amid layoffs), with postings increasingly skewed toward senior roles.
First-order effects
- Employers in software-heavy sectors are still competing for a candidate pool that February's sub-2% tech unemployment rate had already drained, keeping recruiter pipelines full even as headline layoffs mount.
- Job-seeking developers retain unusual leverage: postings at more than double the 2020 baseline mean multiple live offers per candidate, sustaining salary pressure.
Second-order effects
- Companies priced out of the senior market push into non-traditional hunting grounds — the later coverage shows tech workers migrating toward banking, retail, health care, and manufacturing employers willing to pay tech salaries.
- The gap between booming aggregate postings and layoff announcements forces employers to rebalance toward experienced hires over junior ones, a mix shift ZipRecruiter's later data makes explicit: senior roles rising while entry-level share falls.
Third-order effects
- Tech employment is decoupling from tech-company headcount: as laid-off workers absorb into every other industry's payroll, 'tech jobs' become a cross-economy category rather than a sector one, blurring how layoffs signal labor-market health.
- If the senior-skew pattern holds, the entry-level pipeline thins structurally — fewer junior openings today mean a compressed senior talent supply years out, entrenching the scarcity recruiters reported all along.
The trend: Tech labor demand is proving counter-cyclical to tech-company layoffs, with developer hiring diffusing across the whole economy while the posting mix tilts senior.