“Roles are narrower, expectations are clearer, and teams are being built with purpose rather than volume,” said Kye Mitchell, head of Experis, a division of recruiting firm ManpowerGroup.
That’s the backdrop amid a spate of recent hiring data reports released by the US government and various private firms that track hiring. Overall, employment in the US rose by 115,000 jobs in April, with gains in healthcare, transportation and warehousing, and retail trade, according to the latest report by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But tech hiring has slowed and in the last week, research firms have released April numbers that vary wildly; some point to big tech job cuts, others see increases in hiring. Looking deeper at the data, jobs fell in tech-related sectors such as telecom (down 2.5% decline) and infrastructure providers (with a 3.9%).
Though the BLS reported job growth for the overall economy in April, placement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas actually reported a jobs decline by 83,387 across all sectors. It also argued that tech companies are indeed making large-scale cuts, with 33,361 losses in April, Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a statement.
