Unemployment Remains Low For Tech Pros

Above average turnover rates for information technology professionals may signal that confidence in the tech job market is on the rise, particularly as the sector continues to enjoy relatively low unemployment compared to US workers overall, according to new research.

Dice.com’s Tech Employment Snapshot for the third quarter of 2013, which uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows a 3.9 percent unemployment for technology professionals, just less than half of the 7.3 percent unemployment rate for the US overall. This marked a slight uptick in the unemployment rate for information technology workers, however, which is higher than it’s been since the first quarter of 2012. Unemployment was even lower in particular tech fields, with network architects (1.7 percent), network and systems administrators (1.8 percent), computer systems analysts (2.3 percent) and software developers (2.4 percent) experiencing the lowest rates. Technology consulting and data processing and hosting continue to be among the fastest growing fields, adding 13,000 and 2,000 positions, respectively, in the third quarter.