That wild tech jobs growth may be stabilizing: Dice’s Q3 2021 report

In hiring platform Dice’s newest tech jobs reports looking at Q3, Philadelphia is highlighted for its work on the PHL: Most Diverse Tech Hub project, aiming to boost tech skills for the future talent pipeline — specifically Black and brown Philadelphians looking to move into technology careers.

The $500,000 initiative “couldn’t have come at a better time,” Dice said, as the industry needs to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion to move forward. The money is going to four orgs: Coded by Kids, Campus Philly, Venture for America and Technically Media, Technical.ly’s parent company (read more about it here).

But before this 2021 initiative, Philadelphia had long been making a name for itself as a tech hub. The report touts corporations like Comcast, Accenture and Deloitte as large regional employers. It also noted the lengthy list of local universities to pluck tech talent from, as well as its proximity to other East Coast cities, while remaining a pretty affordable place to live. Per the report, the regional average tech salary is $91,670 and the median home price is about $330,000.

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Between Q2 and Q3, Philly’s tech job postings grew by about 10%, the Dice report showed. Of the top 50 tech cities by job posting volume, Philly inched up a bit from its No. 19 spot in Q2 to No. 17 in Q3. Fellow Technical.ly market DC dropped down to No. 8, while Pittsburgh dropped to No. 31 and Baltimore made No. 42.

The top tech occupations needed in Philadelphia include software developer or engineer, project manager, network engineer or architect, cybersecurity engineer, business analyst, IT project manager, systems engineer and program manager. Top hiring orgs for tech roles were Deloitte, Comcast, Accenture, VMware, University of Pennsylvania, Penn Medicine, IBM and Wells Fargo.

The US saw flat quarter-over-quarter growth after increases earlier in the year, which likely points to “a potential stabilization of the continued high demand for technologists across nearly every industry and vertical,” Dice said. This stabilization is likely a sign of recovery, back to pre-pandemic levels of growth.

It also comes after Dice CEO Art Zeile said about the Q2 report: “We are in one of the hottest tech job markets since the dot-com era.”

Nationally, the Dice report showed, job postings in Q3 point to companies looking for technologists who “understand the core concepts of software development and project management, in addition to possessing technical skills such as SQL, Java, Python and Linux.” They’re looking to gear back up to their normal pace of work, and are facing a lot of different challenges that skilled technologists can tackle.

Nationally, the top in-demand skills based on the number of times they were posted include project management, SQL and Java. Check out the top 10:

While the market settles, 2022 will likely be about innovation, the Dice report said. Some organizations have thrived during the pandemic, while others worked hard to survive.

“Now, those who thrived are going to need to innovate to hold on to their new market share, while those previously in survival mode are going to need to fight hard to win back lost ground,” the report summarized. “A boost in posting volumes for senior business analysts, program managers and project coordinators show that organizations are building out not only their product development teams, but also preparing to launch large-scale projects and initiatives.”

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