After Months of Layoffs, Is Tech Hiring Making a Quiet Comeback?

Despite the recent news cycle appears to be dominated by headlines about tech layoffs and hiring freezes, new data suggests tech hiring is quietly picking up again.

An analysis by CompTIA shows a 5.3% increase in active tech job postings in October, signifying one of the strongest monthly gains this 2025. While the job market typically cools down during this period, October saw 217,238 new job postings, up by 3.8% from September.

As new and active job postings are at a yearly high, the jump is surprising for reasons beyond seasonality.

Given the industry’s cautious spending patterns, interest rate pressures, and ongoing workforce reshuffling, this welcome recovery suggests that demand for specialized tech talent hasn’t vanished altogether.

Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA, noted that these modest but meaningful gains reveal the “not always apparent offsetting effects of job gains, job losses and job transitions.”

Several industries expressed strong hiring intent for tech roles, with IT services and software development leading the rebound with 23% year-over-year change. Other sectors like retail (21%)and finance and insurance (13%) also reported high YoY increases, whereas public sector was the exception with its job posting decreasing by a third.

Meanwhile, geographic patterns indicate that the rebound extends beyond Silicon Valley; hiring increases are strongest in mid-sized tech hubs like Austin, Raleigh, and Denver.

Even amid economic uncertainty, these findings demonstrate that long-term digital transformation initiatives can’t stall forever—even contributing to a realignment in the job market.

Instead of a boom, this is a tech industry realignment where companies are not simply hiring more but are hiring differently.

Thus, this uptick doesn’t mirror the pandemic-era hiring surge when companies increased their remote and digital-first roles, only to start cutting jobs to correct the overhiring.

Rather, today’s hiring is strategic and skill-focused, aimed at filling gaps in automation oversight, artificial intelligence integration, and cloud optimization.

To illustrate, notable employers that expressed strong hiring intent, such as Deloitte, Amazon, and JPMorgan Chase, are the same employers laying off workers to make room for AI transformations.

This contrast tells us that while many firms are hiring back, these roles are for more specialized employees intended to replace quantity with capability.

As tech employers become more selective and hire not just for numbers, it comes as no surprise that the most in-demand skill requirement is AI, cited in 323,056 job postings from January to October.

Other top skills and qualifications listed in tech job postings are: scalability, workflow management, and machine learning. Additionally, cross-functional collaboration is a soft skill that saw a 339% YoY increase, possibly due to the fact that companies are aiming for smaller but more optimized teams.

While this hiring rebound is a positive signal for tech workers, it’s important to remember that not all job postings represent real openings. Many companies keep listings live to test market interest or build future candidate pipelines, a growing trend often referred to as “ghost job postings.”

In fact, a report by ResumeUp.AI notes that 27.4% of US job listings on LinkedIn are likely ghost jobs, while a Clarify Capital survey found that nearly 40% of hiring managers admitted to posting roles with no intentions to hire. These inflated numbers can make the job market appear hotter than it really is, leading job seekers to chase positions that may already be on hold.

To avoid falling for ghost postings, tech professionals should prioritize recent listings (posted within the past two weeks) and cross-check company pages and websites for active hiring activity.

Common red flags include vague or overly broad job descriptions, so it helps to pay attention to specificity in listings. Networking directly with recruiters or current employees can also help confirm whether a position is active.

Still, even with some noise in the data, the upward trend in real hiring activity is undeniable. Companies are rebalancing their teams and focusing on roles where technical depth and business value intersect, bringing roles like AI integration specialists, data engineers, and cloud architects to the fore.

For candidates, the best move now is to align their skills with this shift:

• Highlight measurable project outcomes,
• Show adaptability across tools and teams, and;
• Stay current with fast-evolving AI and automation technologies.

Our previous article on in-demand skills according to Drexel University research may help you streamline your upskilling/reskilling process in preparation for the next hiring wave.