Monday Morning Impact – December 25

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the tech services and software sector have continued to hire new employees, according to analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data by CompTIA, a suburban Chicago-based industry association.

In the aggregate, tech sector employment in November was essentially unchanged from the previous month, the CompTIA analysis reveals. The base of tech sector employment stands at nearly 5.6 million workers spanning technology infrastructure, telecommunications, software, and services.

Companies in the tech services and software development sector added an estimated 2,900 new hires for the month. The segment of the industry has recorded employment growth in nine of 11 months this year. Among all companies in the tech services and software development sector, 99.9% are classified as SMBs. They account for 84% of employment in the tech services and software sector. Cloud infrastructure and related positions have had seven months of positive results.

Tech occupations throughout the economy declined by 210,000 last month. The unemployment rate for tech occupations fell to 1.7%, less than half the national unemployment rate (3.7%).

“With the gains in employer hiring intent for AI talent, the job posting data is finally catching up to the hype,” said Tim Herbert, chief research officer of CompTIA. “As an enabling technology, companies hiring for AI skills inevitably need to boost adjacencies in areas such as data infrastructure, cybersecurity and business process automation.”

Employer hiring activity as measured by job postings for tech positions totaled 155,621 for the month. Jobs associated with artificial intelligence (AI) made up 12% of the total, more than 18,000 postings. It’s the first time AI positions have surpassed the 10% threshold. Positions in emerging technologies or jobs that require emerging tech skills accounted for 26% of tech job postings last month.

California (15,193), Texas (14,403) and Virginia (10,103) had the highest volumes of tech job postings among the states. Washington, New York, Dallas, and Chicago led metropolitan markets. Professional, scientific, and technical services, administrative and support, manufacturing, finance and insurance and information were the most active industry sectors.

Channel Impact^®
Despite the continuation of layoffs in the tech industry, key segments continue to look for new employees.

Digital security vendor, ESET, has added Marketing as a Service (MaaS) to its partner program, adding full funnel marketing campaigns focused on delivering new leads, nurturing existing relationships and improving brand awareness.

“Many channel companies lack the resources to deploy sophisticated marketing campaigns that can drive business growth,” said Ryan Grant, Vice President of Sales for ESET North America. “We built this new program based on feedback that our partners are challenged with executing comprehensive marketing campaigns and require dedicated, specialized marketing support. ESET Marketing as a Service addresses this challenge by offering a steady flow of potential customers – moving them through the buyer’s journey from cold lead to demo, to close won.”

Run in six-month campaigns, MaaS is part of ESET’s Marketing Development Fund (MDF) program. Applying a data-driven approach, ESET fine-tunes communications based on campaign performance to ensure the program delivers anticipated results.

The ESET partner program features personalized, high touch sales, marketing and technical support focused on margins, incumbency protection, and local customer support.

Channel Impact^®
The dedicated marketing support help is designed to help channel partners maximize their outreach potential, generate high-quality leads, drive upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and ensure personalized, consistent email communications.