6 Trends in IT Hiring for 2023

Updated: March 29, 2023

Information technology (IT) and all the jobs within the field are still among the highest in-demand services in the United States workforce. As 2023 begins, let’s go over some hiring trends from the IT field and how they can affect your business.

Job Growth in Certain Sectors of IT

The digital age is not going away, and there are plenty of jobs in IT that will continue to grow as the world becomes even more reliant on computers. Spending on IT continues to grow at a faster pace than most other industries, and that includes talent.

Some of the jobs with the most growth heading into 2023 include:

• Cybersecurity analysts and other cybersecurity professionals
• Web developers and web designers
• Cloud engineers

IT hiring remains strong in many industries including healthcare and the energy sector. These roles can help build and protect your web presence as well as store information in secure ways. Is your company sufficiently staffed to support these operations? If not, it’s time to consider hiring from the above list.

Other fast-growing IT careers in 2023 include technical writing and enterprise implementation.

Hybrid Work Is Becoming the Norm

Both companies and employees largely prefer a hybrid work model, where employees work in an office some days and remotely other days.

Among employed workers surveyed by McKinsey, 87% opt for a hybrid work schedule when it’s available, with 55% working between one and four days at home. Flexible work options have become one of the primary reasons people look for a new job, McKinsey says.

Remote and hybrid work has been practiced in the IT industry since before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in 2023, the possibility for remote work—at least some of the time—has become increasingly common for most IT jobs.

Despite Layoffs, IT Hiring Remains Strong

In the last half of 2022, many large tech companies laid off employees amidst uncertainty in the United States economy. Despite this, tech unemployment rates are lower than the overall average (which is a record low 3.5 percent as of December 2022). In fact, tech jobs increased in November 2022, and there are still hundreds of thousands of job openings in the IT industry today. Tech employment increased 3.2 percent across all of 2022, too.

This all means that, generally, job employment in the IT sector is still strong as 2023 gets going.

Obstacles to hiring is spread out for a variety of reasons

Despite the plethora of job openings in the IT industry, hiring managers in IT are still meeting talent-related challenges.

Some of the most common reasons hiring managers struggle to hire talent in IT include:

• High wages
• Competing job offers
• Candidates lacking necessary hard skills
• Shortage of labor in a certain job role

Wages have started to stabilize across all industries as we head into 2023, though. It’s possible that burden could ease for some IT hiring managers in their search for talent.

Labor hoarding and reskilling for IT

Labor hoarding and reskilling were two terms that gained prevalence in the workforce in 2022. Heading into 2023, they’re as important as ever in the IT world.

• Labor hoarding is the process of retaining talent by any means necessary.
• Reskilling is teaching existing employees new skills to help them serve the company’s current areas of need.

As we’ve discussed, certain tech roles are hard to fill simply because of the lack of workers who are skilled to do that job. But there are two strategies to consider for counteracting this shortage.

In tech, you can 1) labor hoard to make sure that employees you know remain within the organization, and 2) reskill them if needed to do certain jobs. This isn’t to say a data analyst can do the work of a cybersecurity analyst off the bat. However, if you’re noticing a need in a certain area, see if anyone from within the organization is willing to learn new skills to complete a new job. You can invest in them (helping retain the employee) and reskill them for both their career growth and the company’s needs.

Cloud Technologies Are Vital for IT Hiring

Even within the ever-expanding tech field, cloud technologies are an area that is experiencing the most investment and growth. This growth comes in both the technologies themselves and the people who build, run, and support them.

Technopedia says that some of the most prevalent trends in the cloud technology world in 2023 are:

• The need for artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities within cloud computing
• Automating business processes
• The growth of virtual cloud desktops
• Continuing to improve data processing and storage through edge computing

IT hiring managers should stay on top of this growing market and make sure their company is up to date with both their technologies and the people who manage them.