AI continues gobbling up IT jobs, but hints about how the technology is now influencing hiring are becoming more visible.

About 130,000 jobs were created in the broader US economy in January, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released Wednesday. The growth was driven by hiring in the healthcare, social assistance, and construction sectors.

But tech-related jobs declined by 20,155 in January, affecting workers in both technical and non-technical occupations, according to figures compiled by industry association CompTIA.

Overall, the unemployment rate for tech jobs rose to 3.6% in January, with 6.6 million employed in such roles. The telecom sector was the hardest hit, seeing a 15% decline, according to the BLS.

Amid job market uncertainty, companies are relying on job postings to get a sense of how AI is influencing changing roles.

CompTIA said tech job postings in January rose to 465,000, up 4% from December, with more job postings for software and systems engineers and tech support personnel. There were also 8,765 listings for AI engineers, up by 1,353 from December.

There were 15% more postings for technical roles in January, including an 18% rise in listings for software developers, said Bekir Atahan, vice president at Experis.

IT postings were lower throughout much of 2025, though the company’s data showed that January brought a 15% increase in new technical role postings, including an 18% rise for software developers. That shift reflects conversations Experis is having with employers reactivating projects that were on hold late last year.

“One of the clearest signals is the growth in roles asking for artificial intelligence-related skills,” Atahan said.

Job postings for AI-related skills jumped more than 50% in January — and software developer positions that include AI skills grew at an even faster pace. “Companies are moving from early exploration to practical implementation, which is creating steady demand for multidisciplinary technologists,” he said.

That’s a major swing from last year, with AI skills becoming an increasingly big factor in technical roles. “Organizations continue to prioritize roles in cloud engineering, data architecture, cybersecurity, and product development,” Atahan said.

AI may be seen as a job destroyer, but it is also changing the supply and demand  dynamics of the workforce, Nela Richardson, chief economist of ADP, said in a blog post. “As artificial intelligence takes on more workplace activities, our traditional ways of thinking about job creation and destruction will tell only part of the story,” she said.

In the future, employers will reconsider the content of their jobs and roles. The focus will no longer be on repetitive work, but on value and growth. That, in turn, is expected to  change job listings, training programs, research focus, and productivity.

“We call it the great job unbundling,” Richardson said.

ADP releases its own set of employment numbers. The payroll processing company reported only 22,000 jobs created by private employers in January, a decline from 44,000 jobs in December.

The BLS data also accounts for federal, state, and local government jobs, which was the biggest loser with about 438,000 jobs lost.

At last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos, attendees sounded the alarm about how AI is eating into white-collar and entry-level jobs. “We expect over the next years, in advanced economies, 60% of jobs to be affected by AI — either enhanced, eliminated, or transformed — and 40% globally. This is like a tsunami hitting the labor market,” said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

White-collar workers include knowledge workers in professional roles such as software, finance, research, and science, said Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. “I think maybe we’re starting to see just the little beginnings of it in software and coding,” he said.

Amodei said he can envision a time when Anthropic will need fewer people at the junior and intermediate levels. “We’re thinking about how to deal with that within Anthropic in a sensible way,” he said.

In many ways, the latest job data shows that view is becoming more common across the tech sector.