Hiring or layoffs – a bit more insight into what’s happening in tech

I wanted to highlight a data point I caught — The number of childcare workers is slowly ticking up — with 10,000 employees added over the past two months — but still is about 9% below pre-pandemic levels as employers struggle to hire.

I’ll lead into the confusion over hiring – is tech doing layoffs or hiring?    Seems the answer is yes.   CIO Dive highlights the growth in the sector, as reported by the US Bureau of labor statistics, combined with the specific headlines of tech layoffs.   The conclusion – much of this churn is resulting in returns to employment levels from the beginning of 2020.  

A key quote.  “If I were a CIO at a retail or industrial company, I would see this as a good time to pick up some talent who have experience building and doing technology at really cool companies in the technology space.”

Because I saw another related piece over in NextGov, highlighting how defense contractors and government agencies themselves could capitalize on the opportunity.  

Here’s why we care about that childcare data – quoting from Axios.  “U.S. labor force participation fell for the third straight month in November. One possible reason is that parents have trouble finding someone to look after their children.  The shortage also helps push older workers out of the labor force as some pitch in to help watch grandchildren at home.”

As an employer, keep an eye more on the problems with hiring that concern specific companies adjusting.     If the tech hiring changes are reset to 2020… that’s not a bad place to end up.   Further evidence that it’s noise to ignore and instead focus on the opportunities presented by those leaders’ miscalculations.