AI might be starting to reduce growth in entry-level IT roles such as customer service and telecommunications. Joblessness in IT last month ...
 |
| AI might be starting to reduce growth in entry-level IT roles such as customer service and telecommunications. |
There were 117,000 unemployed IT professionals last month, an increase from 106,000 in August, according to a report from consulting firm Janco Associates, which based its findings on data from the U.S. Department of Labor. Job reductions in the IT sector, which includes software, telecommunications, information services, and data processing, totaled 14,300 in the last three months.
Across all job categories, U.S. employers added 336,000 jobs in September, the strongest gain since January, the Labor Department said Friday. While job losses continue to hit IT, the overall unemployment rate has held at historically low levels. “With inflation, energy costs, companies are trying to cut back on expenses,” said Victor Janulaitis, chief executive of Janco Associates.
Over the past year, chief information officers and other corporate tech leaders have been pushed to cut back on costly IT projects while reducing their cloud and software spending. At the same time, CIOs are facing pressure from CEOs to expand their use of generative AI—and some are getting the resources to do so. The result, according to Janulaitis, is that AI could be starting to reduce the growth of entry-level roles in IT such as customer service and telecommunications—accelerating a trend that began as automation and cloud computing took root.
Companies aren’t currently making “wholesale replacements” because of AI, he said, but have slowed hiring for entry-level roles compared with senior-level IT positions. While many white-collar workers fear losing their jobs to AI, the technology is already creating new roles, such as AI “reskillers,” or teachers, and so-called prompt engineers. Jobs in emerging technologies made up 26.5% of all tech job postings in September, an increase from 22% in August, according to trade group CompTIA.
Of those postings, 36% were associated with AI. Many companies are either evaluating the technology or upskilling their existing staff with AI skills, said Tim Herbert, CompTIA’s chief research officer, so the emergence of AI in the workforce won’t “translate immediately to net new head count.” “Workers view it both ways,” Herbert said. “In some cases, they recognize that some of their job could be at risk, but they also see it as an opportunity to free up time so that they can be more innovative.”
Most technology leaders don’t believe generative AI will replace IT workers, arguing that demand for staff, especially in areas like cybersecurity and data management, continues to outpace supply. In other areas, software developers remained most in-demand among IT workers last month, while IT project management, data analytics, and cloud-computing skills were also in high demand, CompTIA said.
Samir Shah, CIO of Fortune Brands Innovations, said that despite ongoing budget constraints, the home- and security-products maker is hiring about 20 employees in areas such as business intelligence, agile project management and cloud infrastructure. Weighing all the factors, pressure on company growth is just as urgent as pressure on budgets, Shah said. “The transformation the business is looking for needs it.”