January 2025 Jobs Report
Methodology
To present the insights in this report, Dice used job posting data provided by Dice’s partner, Lightcast, which has a database of more than 1 billion current and historical job postings worldwide. Dice pulled data on January 10, 2024 and analyzed over 7 million tech job postings in the U.S. to gather our specific dataset, which we then filtered for “Information Technology” jobs that fall under “Full Time,” “Part Time” and “Flexible Hours.” We gathered the list of top employers in the “Industry Analysis” section by using the above criteria, with an additional filter for job postings that only derive from employer sites. The information in this report is a snapshot of tech job posting data as of January 10, 2024, and backward revisions to prior month’s data may occur from the sources used in this report.
How are Tech Jobs Faring in the Hiring Market?
The tech job market showed some encouraging signs of improvement in December, with some expected cooling in overall hiring alongside exciting strength in specific sectors and skills. Tech job postings decreased by 10% month-over-month from November, which aligns with typical seasonal patterns. It's common for tech hiring to slow in December as candidates and employers take breaks for the holidays and organizations hold off until new budgets and strategies roll out in the new year.. However, December 2024 was markedly better than December 2023, showing 7.6% year-over-year growth. Perhaps most encouragingly, December also saw the tech unemployment rate drop to 2%, down from 2.5% in November. Notably it remained well below the national unemployment rate of 4.1%.
The share of tech job postings requiring AI skills nearly doubled in 2024, jumping from 15% in January to 28% in December. While December saw a slight decline in AI skill requirements—28% of postings compared to 29% in November—this aligns with typical seasonal trends and does not diminish the strong year-over-year growth of 88.5% since December 2023. Demand for AI skills remains robust, as highlighted in our recent Tech Salary Report, which found that AI expertise commanded a premium of nearly 18% by the end of 2024. This reflects a persistent and growing interest in AI capabilities across the tech industry.
Where are Tech Job Postings Concentrated?
Hiring growth was driven by the insurance and education industries, which saw month-over-month increases of 76% and 72%, respectively. Telecommunications also experienced month-over-month growth over 50%.
Telecommunications and finance/banking led the way in industry growth year-over-year at 169% and 156% increases, respectively.
Regional hiring showed some moderation in line with the time of year, with all top states experiencing slight month-over-month decreases. Florida showed the most resilience with only a 2% decline, while Texas (-8%), Virginia (-9%), and New York (-9%) followed. However, year-over-year growth remained positive in most major markets, with New York leading at 28% growth, followed by Washington (21%) and North Carolina (17%).
Among metro areas, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria showed the smallest monthly decline at 8%. Atlanta emerged as a bright spot with 31% year-over-year growth, followed by Boston (18%) and San Jose (13%).
Who Are Companies Hiring Right Now?
The job market continues to show strong demand for core technical roles, with software engineers, electrical engineers, business analysts, systems engineers, and data scientists leading job posting volumes. Notably, several specialized roles saw dramatic month-over-month growth, including SAP project managers (189%), implementation consultants (182%), and automation controls engineers (182%).
Looking at year-over-year changes, Python software engineers saw the highest growth at 305%, followed by automation controls engineers (292%) and lead data scientists (259%). This trend may suggest increasing demand for advanced technical expertise, particularly in automation and data science.
Key skills remain centered around both technical and soft capabilities, with communication, management, problem-solving, computer science, and troubleshooting leading job requirements. Emerging skills showing significant growth include digital product management (94% month-over-month) and power distribution (71%). The most dramatic year-over-year skill growth was seen in CPT coding (377%), trustworthiness (316%), and operational efficiency (211%).
AI-related skills continue to show strong growth, with MLOps and large language modeling appearing among the top year-over-year growth skills at 143% and 140% respectively, another sign indicating sustained investment in AI capabilities across industries.
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