The US tech industry has faced a steady stream of layoffs since the recession, with a sharp decline in new job openings in April.
The country’s IT industry is the fourth-largest employer in the US and employs more than a million people.
However, the sector is also experiencing a major decline in growth, as firms are cutting back on hiring, citing the downturn in the global economy.
According to a survey by tech industry trade group Tech Industry Association (TIA), more than 40,000 IT workers have left the sector since the end of the year, and the number of job openings has dropped by more than two-thirds.
TIA’s data shows that over the past two years, the US IT industry has shed more than 2,000 jobs, while employment in the retail and hospitality sectors have dropped by an average of more than 30,000 a month.
“The IT industry, with its large number of skilled workers, is facing a significant slowdown in growth,” said Alexei Popovkin, the chief economist for TIA, referring to the decline in employment in both sectors.
The survey shows that nearly two-fifths of the companies surveyed reported that they had no IT employees, while nearly one-third reported that there were no IT jobs at all.
The trend of job losses has been driven by a series of tech firms cutting back as well.
These companies have been unable to maintain a steady growth rate in the face of a global slowdown in business investment and demand.
This trend has been reflected in the percentage of employees who are now in IT roles, according to the survey.
The number of new jobs added in the IT sector has also fallen significantly.
According the TIA survey, over the first four months of the current fiscal year, the number had dropped by 20 percent, while over the same period the number in the Retail and Hospitality sectors had increased by almost 90 percent.
In addition, the IT industry lost over 300,000 employees over the last three years.
The US economy is expected to lose more than 500,000 US jobs in the next three years, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which has also predicted that the unemployment rate will reach a new record of nearly 14 percent in 2020.
