IT unemployment in the US on the rise, report finds

The Register reports that unemployment rates for IT professionals in the U.S. rose from 4.6% to 5.5% between April and May, marking the fifth straight month that unemployment in the sector surpassed the national average.

Only jobs involving large language models, omnichannel commerce, and blockchain technology are abundant for U.S. IT professionals, according to a Janco analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Additional findings showed that the telecommunications industry and reporting-, support-, and monitoring-related positions incurred the most losses amid the growing adoption of artificial intelligence. "Companies do not have the desire to hire new staff to meet mandated compliance requirements. Ergo, they are focusing on AI to automate as many of those tasks as possible, especially for reporting and monitoring," said Janco CEO Victor Janulaitis. Such a report comes after an EY survey revealing that planned or completed agentic AI implementation among almost half of business leaders, with 92% noting potentially increased AI spending within the next year.