CompTIA's State of the Tech Workforce Report Packed with Engaging Information

Every year, tech industry association CompTIA issues a comprehensive, data-driven report about the growth and composition of the tech workforce in the United States. The newest version hit the Internet on March 30. Not only does it offer lots of interesting information, it also allows visitors to inspect the underlying data through a variety of visualizations, charts and maps.

‍

For those interested in what’s going on with IT employment in the United States, and where that workforce may be headed, it’s a veritable treasure trove. If you click the "Explore Tool" link shown at the bottom of the lead-in graphic, it will guide you through the various elements in the report. And indeed a full PDF copy of the actual report is also available for download.

‍

As you explore the various tabs in this interactive repository, you can click "Key Findings" to return to the top (or scroll up and down, as you might prefer).

‍

Taking the Tour: A Walk-Through

‍

The report summary is called "Key Findings." It captures some of the most noteworthy insights that emerged from the underlying data. I repeat some here because they're interesting and potentially valuable to readers:

‍

The current level of tech employment in the United States for 2023 is 9.4 million. This includes both tech industry jobs (6.1 miillion) and tech occupation jobs (5.6 million), where the former represents companies that manufacture or support information technology, and the latter represents out-and-out IT jobs irrespective of industry. (Yes, they overlap, which is why the total is less than the sum of these two numbers).

‍

CompTIA is forecasting the creation of 273,000 new tech jobs in 2023. That represents grown of just under 3 percent for this year.

U.S. employers posted 4.3 million tech job openings across all of 2022.

CompTIA estimates U.S. tech industry output at $1.97 trillion for 2023.

The median tech occupation wage in the United States is 103 percent higher than the standard median wage (that’s slightly more than double).

There are currently more than 582,000 tech business establishments in the United States (an increase of 7.5 percentover the preceding year’s total).

Projected job growth for tech jobs over the coming decade (2023-2032) is almost double the average national job growth rate.

‍

What are the essential take-aways here? IT jobs are in higher demand, pay better, and offer more opportunities than the average for the whole workforce.

‍

Step 2: The Map Views

‍

The next thing you’ll see is a map of the United States, state by state, or for major metro areas. They’re color coded to show you where the IT jobs are. The darker the shade of blue, the more IT jobs by absolute count. (Of course this also ties to size and population for states and metro areas, so you won’t find too many surprises in the maps.)

‍

You can drill down into states or metro areas individually. Where metro areas span multiple states, as they sometimes do, you can inspect their elements in each constituent state as well.

‍

Step 3: Intersection of Tech Industry, Workforce Composition, and More

‍

Additional workforce composition data lurks alongside the Venn diagram that shows tech industry jobs and tech occupation jobs. It shows the percentage of the workforce in tech jobs (5.8 percent), percentile rankings for tech occupation pages (at the 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentiles), leading tech occupation jobs, and more.

‍

Text explainers for each item are also available. And the underlying data and further details appear in the full PDF report linked in the first paragraph here: Its Data Appendix is where all the numbers used to draw various conclusions may be found.

‍

There’s Plenty of Engaging Info Here…

‍

The report itself is well worth perusing. If you work in IT, then you’ll probably find plenty of information about where you are, what you do, what you make, who’s working with you, and much more. I always look forward to this report, and find oodles of interesting facts and info about the IT workforce therein.

‍

You should, too. Be sure to check it out, but give yourself some time as you’re very likely to get sucked into the details. Cheers!