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
Goood afternoon everyone!! I hope you are all doing well. — Quote of the Week:
Context & Ripple Effects
This story sits at the hinge between two very different narratives. The pandemic trough saw analysts counting roughly 20% drops in tech job openings within weeks of mid-March 2020; by February 2022 the market had swung so far the other way that tech unemployment sat at 1.7%, with cybersecurity at just 0.2%. Today's Indeed.com reading — US developer postings up 120% on that early-2020 baseline — shows demand not merely recovered but running well past pre-pandemic levels, even as layoff announcements dominate the news cycle.
First-order effects
- Recruiters in the sectors still hiring face a candidate market where postings vastly outnumber available talent, keeping wage pressure and time-to-fill high for employers like the ones they staff.
- Companies cutting headcount get the headlines, but the Indeed data means their laid-off developers are being absorbed elsewhere rather than pooling into unemployment.
Second-order effects
- Non-tech employers become the demand sink: the related coverage shows tech workers eyeing banking, retail, health care, and manufacturing, spreading competition for engineers beyond the usual buyers.
- Posting volume conceals a compositional shift — the later ZipRecruiter data shows senior roles growing while entry-level share shrinks, so the 120% headline overstates how open the ladder's bottom rungs are.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, tech employment structurally decouples from tech-company headcount: occupations keep growing across industries even through layoff cycles, as the record 6.39M tech-occupation employment figure suggests.
- A persistently senior-weighted demand mix narrows the entry-level pipeline, pushing the industry toward apprenticeship-style or non-degree routes to fill junior roles.
The trend: Tech labor demand is becoming sector-agnostic — postings and employment grow through layoff cycles as engineering work disperses into banking, retail, health care, and manufacturing.