Tech job losses are still showing up, even in a decent jobs report.
The U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in August, according to the latest BLS report. But the information sector went the other way, losing 23,000 jobs during the month.
That was a big jump from the recent trend. Over the prior 12 months, the sector had averaged about 8,000 job losses per month, meaning August was nearly 3x worse than normal.
The information sector is not a perfect stand-in for "tech." It includes software publishing, data processing, telecom, media, and other information services. But it is still one of the better public measures for tracking stress in tech-adjacent jobs.
The overall labor market was still adding jobs, while information-sector losses picked up sharply.