CompTIA's reading of the March employment data has two numbers that look like they cannot both be true. Employment in tech occupations across the economy fell by 118,000 for the month. In the same month employers posted 254,000 new tech job openings, up 9.7% from February and 8.9% from a year earlier, taking active postings past 537,000. Tech unemployment sat at 3.9%. CompTIA's Seth Robinson described the market as showing signs of stabilizing.
I do not think the two numbers contradict each other. Cutting headcount and opening requisitions in the same month is what a skills swap looks like from the outside. The roles leaving and the roles arriving are not the same roles. The release has a hint of that in the experience mix of the postings: 20% ask for zero to three years, 27% for four to seven, 17% for eight or more.
What I take from it as someone who builds web teams is that backfilling like-for-like is the losing move in a swap. When a role opens, the question I think is worth asking is not how to replace the person who left but what the team needs now that it did not need when that role was defined. Sometimes the answer is the same role. Often it is not, and the requisition is the one moment where changing it costs nothing.
When a role opened on your team recently, did the job description change, or did it get copied forward?
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