In December, IT employment eked out a small gain rising to 5,343,000 jobs, according to TechServe Alliance, the national trade association of the IT & Engineering Staffing and Solutions industry. On a year-over-year basis, IT employment grew by 0.30% since December 2017 adding 16,200 IT workers.

IT employment experienced the lowest annual rate of growth in nine years.

Engineering employment increased by 0.21 percent sequentially to 2,631,000. On a year-over-year basis, growth in engineering employment increased by 2.52% since December 2017 or 64,700 engineering workers.

“IT employment struggled to remain in positive territory during 2018—posting less than a one percent growth rate for the first time in nine years,” observed Mark Roberts, CEO of TechServe Alliance. “As we and many other observers have noted before, this is a supply side–not a demand side problem. With an insufficient number of U.S. students pursuing careers in STEM occupations coupled with the Administration’s restrictive immigration policies, growth of the U.S. IT workforce will remain challenging for the foreseeable future,” added Roberts.

For the complete January 2019 TechServe Alliance Employment Indices please visit: https://www.techservealliance.org/files/January_2019_Index_MBR.pdf