RALEIGH — IT job openings held steady in February with slightly more than 30,000 publicly promoted open positions, showing strength ahead of the coronavirus’s full impact.
The report, released by the NC Technology Association (NC TECH) today, offers a snapshot of a job market that is healthy and stable in the days before the coronavirus spread into the United States.
NC Tech has released its monthly snapshot of available IT positions in the state, broken down in several ways (top ten listings by MSA, job type, skillset, and employers) utilizing the TalentNeuron tool from Gartner.
“North Carolina IT job openings in February remained at a similar level to last month, as well as to February’s openings a year ago,” said Brooks Raiford, CEO of NC TECH, in a statement.
However, much has changed in recent days.
The coronavirus pandemic has quickly thrust the world into recession as bars and restaurants shut down and countries instruct their citizens to hunker down.
A picture of the economic devastation in North America and Europe has already started to emerge. A US government report published Thursday showed that 281,000 Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits last week — a sudden 33% jump over the week before and the largest percentage increase since 1992.
Raiford said he cannot say how the pandemic will impact next month’s IT job openings report.
“The tool we use from Gartner won’t have the March data until after March is over, so there isn’t really a way to tell at this point,” he said.
But he expects that there will be impact.
“Anecdotally, we are hearing of hiring freezes, holds on discretionary spending, and of course a move to remote working for all or nearly all employees in the tech sector.”
