Gains and Losses Within the IT Industry
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Job growth among IT service providers remains strong, but not so among manufacturers. |
In June, the number of people employed at companies providing computer system design and related services--so called IT services firms--rose to a record 1,334,400, according to a report issued Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's up by 4 percent in a year and 63 percent, or 513,200 jobs, in the past decade.
But employment among the makers of IT hardware in the United States has headed in the opposite direction. The number of jobs at computer and peripheral equipment manufacturers slipped to 192,800 in June, down 3.1 percent from a year earlier. The IT hardware industry has shed nearly half of its jobs since January 1990, when computer and peripheral makers employed 378,100 people. A decade ago, IT hardware makers employed 316,700, 123,900 more people, or 40 percent more than today.
As a comparison, in January 1990, IT services firms employed 405,900. Since then, their payrolls have soared by 928,400 employees.
