The number of advertised IT jobs dropped year-on-year in 2024, according to research by the Recruitment and Employment Federation (REC).
Figures from REC saw a drop in postings across most tech roles, showing a return to pre-pandemic hiring levels.
REC isn’t the only firm noticing these changes, with Matt Monette, country lead at Deel, seeing similar patterns.
“After years of aggressive tech hiring, widespread layoffs over the past two years have made companies more cautious about rebuilding headcount, leading to a decline in job postings for certain roles,” he said.
“That said, [Deel’s] data shows a growing demand for specialist professional services roles. For example, we saw a 74% increase in hiring of accountants globally, suggesting businesses are prioritising financial stability in an uncertain economic climate.”
The tech hiring landscape has seen peaks and troughs over the past five years – during the pandemic, demand for IT professionals rose as the world turned to technology to complete everyday tasks from home due to global lockdowns, followed by the “great resignation”, where swathes of tech workers left their jobs looking for new opportunities both in and outside the sector.
Though REC figures suggest a drop-off in this uptick in demand for tech professionals, interest in tech talent is still high, as rapid development and adoption of technology forces businesses and individuals to arm themselves with the necessary digital capabilities required in the modern world.
REC’s research, which partners with labour market data and analytics firm Lightcast to collate data from thousands of job board sites, found most IT professions had at least a 40% year-on-year drop in advertised roles in 2024, with posts for roles in IT user support technicians suffering the largest drop, at 47.1%.
Demand for IT networking professionals declined by 40.7% in 2024, from 60,967 advertised jobs in 2023 to 36,172 last year, and advertisements for management consultant/business analysts and web designers both saw a drop of almost 42% in the same period.
While programmers and software developers are still some of the most sought-after talent in the tech sector, with 192,261 advertised roles in 2024, this was still a 44.8% year-on-year drop compared with the 348,446 postings the previous year.
There are many reasons why these declines in advertised jobs may be taking place – a lack of skilled workers to fill tech roles has made hiring the available tech talent more competitive. This has created a trend towards training talent internally to ensure access to workers with the right skills.
Budget concerns as a result of the unpredictable economic climate have also had many employers dialling back on tech projects, in turn leaving workers worried about redundancies and businesses putting hiring on pause.
But REC chief executive Neil Carberry claimed the hiring landscape in the tech sector will bounce back once the economy begins to recover and investment in technologies such as artificial intelligence increases.
“It was a particularly difficult year for IT professionals looking for new jobs – a complete reverse of demand during and just after the pandemic, which was very high,” he said. “These roles will bounce back quickly as companies invest in IT transformation during an economic recovery.”
