For all the doom and gloom surrounding the economy, the tech jobs market rebounded in June, dropping the sector’s unemployment rate as postings bumped up slightly.

That’s according to CompTIA’s monthly analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, which shows that tech unemployment has been consistently lower than the national rate, which is currently 4.1%. But in recent months tech numbers had been ticking up—to 3.4% in May—making the drop to 2.8% in June noticeable.

Hire, robot. For all the warnings of job loss for the white-collar workforce because of AI, including recent comments from CEOs, the reality tells a slightly different story. Tim Herbert, CompTIA chief research officer, said in a statement accompanying the numbers that the employment data “showed surprising strength for the month given recent expectations.”

That includes the perception that AI is driving the sector; as Herbert noted, the data tells a more complicated story—though CompTIA’s analysis did show job listings including AI skills continuing to skyrocket.

“It’s worth pointing out there is more to tech hiring than AI,” Herbert said. “The data continues to confirm employer hiring activity across many tech talent domains.”

So, who’s hiring?—EH

During a recent IT Brew event dedicated to guiding tech pros through the challenge of app sprawl, an attendee had the following question:

Culturally, how do I help my IT team be seen in the company as a driver of innovation and not a barrier to bringing on new tools? We recently had to shut down the use of an AI tool we hadn’t fully evaluated yet because of the large amount of proprietary data we have to keep secure and I’m worried it’s created a culture where employees are using tools anyways without us knowing (arguably more unsafe).

IT Brew guest and Gartner Associate Principal Analyst Olivia Montgomery told attendees that IT teams should soften their communication style and foster a more collaborative spirit, rather than banning new AI outright.

“Maybe instead of just shutting down an app completely, you work with them to integrate it into the ecosystem and be very clear about, ‘Hey, let’s together get this into a secure environment [where] you’re happy with the functionality and we’re happy with the security and the usage of it,” Montgomery said.

PwC’s annual CEO survey found that 49% of global chief execs—polled in October and November 2024—expected GenAI to increase profitability over the next year.

How to get AI to follow the rules.—BH

The tech industry is booming—Deloitte projects that global spending on the sector will increase by 9.3% this year—AI is the hot new commodity on the digital market, and data is driving it all. That has led to a heightened demand for data center capacity, which is increasing by 15% annually—though that’s not enough, according to JLL.

With that added demand comes a rise in threats, and physical danger to data center security is often overlooked. Kiersten Todt, former CISA chief of staff, told IT Brew in a recent interview the lack of focus on those threats represents a dangerous gap in security.

“A physical breach can have the same catastrophic impact as a cyberattack,” Todt said.

IT Brew spoke to Todt to get a better sense of the danger, and some solutions.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The physical threats to data centers are very real, clearly. What can you tell us about what you’ve seen?

It’s sort of like breaking and entering. Several years ago, when I was at CISA, we saw physical attacks on grids in North Carolina. I think it was gunshots at the time.

In this world of technology, we’re thinking about digital attacks and digital breaches. But we can’t forget that these entities, particularly physical structures, are just as vulnerable to physical breaches. A physical breach can lead to the theft of sensitive information, financial losses, operational disruptions, and then even reputational damage.

Why you shouldn’t ignore an IRL attack.—EH