Tech Job Market Findings - Jan 2026

01 Mar 2026 2 min readTech jobs research Tech Job Market Findings - Jan 2026

I saw an interesting graph on Hacker News today suggesting demand for tech jobs has continue to decrease over the last 4 years. I was curious what the overall health of the tech market looked like for these sectors, so I pulled some data to look at the broader trend.

Findings

Using Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data across similar tech industries, I found that tech employment rose steadily from 2,730,100 workers in January 2016 to a peak of 3,820,600 in November 2022. That’s a gain of about 1.09 million jobs (+40%) over six years. The COVID downturn in mid-2020 was relatively shallow and short-lived for these sectors. Hiring then accelerated rapidly through 2021 and 2022 during the post-pandemic tech boom. Since the peak in late 2022, employment has pulled back slightly and flattened out. The most recent data point (January 2026) shows 3,681,200 workers, which is:

–139,400 jobs from the peak (–3.6%)

+951,100 jobs compared to January 2016 (+34.8%)

In other words, tech employment hasn’t collapsed. It grew aggressively for years, overshot during the 2021–2022 hiring surge, and is now sitting on a plateau slightly below the peak. The market shows that plateau are likely what people are reacting to where companies are hiring fewer entry-level devs and “pure architecture” roles while still needing experienced roles across the board.

The takeaway

Hiring cooled after the boom, but the industry is still significantly larger than it was a decade ago. The real shift appears to be who companies want to hire, not whether tech jobs exist.