Chaotic February jobs numbers show unemployment rising and an increase in postings

Drop it like it’s hot—and by “it,” we mean tech jobs, which fell in February.

Tech unemployment rose in February, even as the market appeared to improve year over year. A CompTIA analysis of the numbers found that unemployment ticked up from January’s 2.9% to 3.3% in February. That was under the national rate of 4.1%; CompTIA has consistently found tech unemployment outperforming the economy as a whole.

“The report paints a mixed picture as labor market data catches up to market developments,” Tim Herbert, CompTIA chief research officer, said in a statement accompanying the numbers.

Cement shoes. In the tech sector, the bleeding was near universal. IT and custom software services and system design saw the biggest drop with 9,800 positions lost. PC, semiconductor, and components manufacturing saw a decline of 2,700 positions; telecommunications and cloud infrastructure were the outlier, adding 1,000 and 700 positions, respectively.

It’s a complicated time for the industry as it faces headwinds from the broader economy. Job cuts in the sector were the third-highest of all professions for the first two months of 2025, according to an analysis from career transitioning advisory firm Challenger, Gray, & Christmas. Even so, the year-to-date number was 22% less than over the same period in 2024.

Ice creams. Job postings, another indicator, rose from 476,000 in January to nearly 490,000 in February, CompTIA found. That number included 211,862 new postings for the month. Still, there were drops; tech support specialists went down by 2,759 postings and software developers and engineers dropped 1,154 postings.

The top states for postings were California, at 23,877; Texas, at 20,474; Virginia, at 13,100; New York, at 10,473; and Florida, at 9,242. Top metro areas for postings were Washington, DC, at 14,002; New York, at 12,967; Dallas, at 9,211; Chicago, at 6,596; and Atlanta, at 6,205.

Playing close. With such a high number of available jobs, employers may need to turn to upskilling and nontraditional hires for staffing. Crystal Morin, a Sysdig cybersecurity strategist, told IT Brew that when it comes to her subsector of the industry, there’s less of a talent shortage than a lack of the proper assets. That can be intimidating, she said, with prospective employees “scared to start applying because they don’t think they’re qualified enough.”

“I think there’s plenty of people out there on the job market that we could bring into cybersecurity,” Morin said.