Despite all those layoffs, Philadelphia’s tech employment saw very little change since 2022

A new, national breakdown of tech jobs from CompTIA gives us a clearer picture of the state of local tech: There’s been very little change in tech employment and wages since 2022.

Amid a possible recession and mass tech layoffs since last year, it’s easy to understand why folks might be less sure of the local industry. Last year’s State of the Tech Workforce report from CompTIA suggested Philadelphia would likely add about 5,100 jobs, but it instead lost about 1,500.

This year’s report shows that Philadelphia’s net tech employment was 155,592 jobs, just shy of last year’s approximately 157,000 people, a less than 1% difference. These folks make up 5.2% of Philadelphia’s employment total in 2023. The region, which includes Camden and Wilmington, also ranked 13th for net tech employment in the US compared to 2022’s ranking of 12.

The 2023 report also breaks down who in Philadelphia are tech professionals employed in tech or in another industry, like healthcare or education, versus those who work within the sector but aren’t in a tech role, like marketing or finance. Nearly 90,000 people are in tech industry jobs, and 101,900 people are in tech occupation jobs. There’s about 40% overlap of roles, for a total net tech employment of about 155,600 jobs for the region.

This year’s median annual wage —  $96,374 — was a few hundred dollars more than last year’s median annual wage of $95,734. This salary is 105% higher than the median metro wage. And the tech industry reportedly has a $35.5 billion impact on the region’s economy, a figure that accounts for 7.6% of the region’s total economic impact.

Tech hiring hasn’t quite recovered since the pandemic began, with about 16,000 tech job postings listed in the region in Q4 2022, compared to about 25,000 tech job postings in Q1 of 2020.

But the CompTIA report shows that in Philadelphia, certain roles have seen some promising growth. This year, software, programmers, web and QA roles have seen a 2.3% increase. Database, data science, CS and analytics roles have seen a 1.8% increase. And cybersecurity and systems engineers have seen a 1.3% increase.

Philadelphia did rank highly on the CompTIA report for its diversity metrics — second, after only DC. Here in Philadelphia, 9% of the tech workforce is Black, 45% is Latinx and 27% are women.

Read the full report