West Coast tech giants have cut tens of thousands of employees in recent months, but economic turmoil is expected to have a more muted effect on the Central Florida tech sector.
The demand from local employers for tech talent remains ahead of available workers, said Tracy Dickerhoff, managing partner of Maitland-based staffing firm Kolter Solutions LLC. “In IT, I call it negative employment. The talent may or may not exist. If they do, employers have to steal them from another company. They may have to overpay or over-offer.”
Companies that include Alphabet, Amazon and Meta have let go of 55,000-plus employees since last year, but these mass layoffs haven’t hit Central Florida’s tech sector.
This year, four local companies have notified Florida of widespread layoffs that total to 226 jobs. Those companies operate in food services, health care, manufacturing and waste management — but not in tech.
One notable exception is Orlando-based fintech unicorn Stax, which in February laid off dozens of employees, including just under two dozen locally. Stax carried out this “right sizing” to follow a more focused business strategy and boost profitability, interim CEO John Kristel previously said.
However, the need for tech workers across the region will only grow, Dickerhoff said. The accelerating retirement of baby boomers and the increased need for information technology and cyber workers spurred by the Covid-19 pandemic means the gap between demand and supply will “stay wide and get wider," he said.
Data points from nationwide information technology group Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) show demand for tech workers is heavy. Employers listed 2,691 metro Orlando tech job postings in January, up by 528 postings from December.
Meanwhile, the nationwide unemployment rate for tech workers fell from 1.8% in December to 1.5% in January, according to the association’s latest data.
“Undoubtedly some companies over-hired and are now scaling back," CompTIA Chief Researcher Tim Herbert said in the report. "The low tech unemployment rate and steady hiring activity by employers confirms the long-term demand for tech talent across many sectors of the economy."
That’s the good news for tech professionals. Still, Dickerhoff said inflation, rising costs and compressed profit margins put pressure on businesses, even high-tech companies and departments, to cut back. “Any time that happens, companies will look for efficiencies. That means not necessarily mass layoffs, but it could be 2%-4% workforce reductions.”
The tight labor market for high-tech roles may mean people who lose their jobs can find a new one quickly.
However, research out of 365 Data Science, which analyzed data from more than 1,100 public LinkedIn profiles, recently showed only 26% of recently laid-off workers managed to find a new job, sister publication Triangle Business Journal reported.
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