Tech layoffs have abounded during 2023. Company after company announced pink slip numbers in the thousands and sometimes in the tens of thousands. That would normally signal tough times for unemployed techies and new college grads entering the workforce.

But these are not normal times. Despite all the layoffs, it appears IT workers still have the upper hand. Instead of a buyer’s market, we have a seller’s market wherein skilled IT resources remain in high demand across the country.

“Current demand for tech talent greatly outstrips supply, which is expected to be the case until at least 2026,” said Mbula Schoen, an analyst at Gartner. “Many of those being impacted by layoffs are in business functions, rather than tech roles.”

According to a survey by the Indeed jobs site, 70% of tech workers had more than one offer to choose from when they secured their current position. Ten percent of them are currently working multiple jobs. Of that group, 13% were working two full-time jobs, and 16% have worked two in the past.

“Even with tech layoffs continuing to make headlines, it’s clear that tech workers are still very much in the driver’s seat with lots of opportunities for work across the nation,” said Scott Dobroski, an Indeed career trends analyst. “Some tech workers are even working two full-time jobs at once, perhaps in hopes of ‘trying out’ two companies to determine which one is really the best fit for them.”

Despite the appearance of a tighter job market, tech workers are not budging on the demands and preferences they place on employers and potential employers. Three quarters of tech workers are looking for remote or hybrid jobs despite only 20% of open positions being fully remote. Employers, therefore, have an uphill battle if they want to hire tech talent quickly. Startups, in particular, may struggle. Sixty-seven percent of those laid off and looking for a new job said they want to work for established companies, not startups.

The glut of opportunities is partly fueled by non-tech companies upping their game and offering competitive salaries and benefits. They are looking for new tech hires to help them with digital transformation, infrastructure modernization and artificial intelligence (AI) projects.

“There are increasingly opportunities for IT jobs outside traditional tech companies,” said Gartner’s Schoen.

Schoen added that CIOs are often losing their talented employees faster than they can hire them. In key function areas, like data science, software engineering and cybersecurity, the talent supply remains as tight or tighter than before. Thus, HR departments looking to hire can expect competition in many talent pools and that the cost of acquiring that talent is rising.

Dobroski has observed similar phenomena in the IT job scene.

“Some are finding high-paying opportunities at non-tech companies in need of tech workers, ranging from finance to aerospace to consulting companies and more,” he said. “Tech workers still carry a lot of power to find a new opportunity faster than other workers.”

Howard Holton, an analyst at GigaOM, also thinks the tech hiring landscape is largely a seller’s market. That said, he’s noticed that tech layoffs have had some impact on the hiring picture.

“It is perhaps a little easier to hire IT people and cloud people right now than it was a year ago, but security is still a nightmare,” he said.

Aimei Wei, CTO at Stellar Cyber, claims that there are over 400,000 open jobs in North America and millions open globally in cybersecurity. This is partly due to a genuine shortage of security personnel in tandem with a surge in newly created cybersecurity positions to cope with the severe threat posed by ransomware and other nefarious cyber-activities.

Flashpoint’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Index reports that at least 650 companies had been victimized recently by the Clop ransomware group, which began exploiting the MOVEit zero-day vulnerability in May to gain illegal access to enterprise systems. In total, the index covers more than 14,201 new vulnerabilities discovered in the first half of 2023. More than 2,000  of them were missed by the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) and National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Thirty-six percent of the disclosed vulnerabilities have a working proof-of-concept or a known public exploit. In other words, even low-level attackers now have an opportunity to compromise vulnerable systems.

Companies can’t hire cybersecurity talent fast enough. Holton has observed more opening related to the security side of networking, application modernization and cloud native infrastructure.

“Software development teams need to start focusing more energy on learning and understanding security and networking,” he said. “Developers often have a lack of understanding on how networking and security go hand and hand with cloud native.”

He recommended that DevOps engineers get certified in networking and security. He touted InfoSec Institute’s training and certification programs for security analysts, as well as its new placement agency. As part of a placement, candidates complete a certification.

“There is also an on-the-job training approach where people come in at a lower rate as they train for a year or two,” said Holton. “Your cost matches their capabilities, but you get people right away, and they get to grow as part of your security practice.”

Dobroski believes that the best way to deal with stiff competition for tech talent is to gain an understanding of what today’s tech workers really want at work. This is crucial in attracting, hiring and retaining good resources.

“With tech workers accepting multiple offers and prioritizing flexibility, employers must adapt their strategies to attract and hire these in-demand workers,” he said.

Schoen advised CIOs to cast their nets wider and tap into a larger pool of both active and passive IT candidates. This might include more attention to employee referral programs, leveraging AI to source passive candidates from social search and targeting laid-off workers with training to help them acquire the needed IT skills.

“With opportunities in IT vastly exceeding what is available, companies that do not live up to employees’ expectations may find that even if they are able to get candidates in the door, those candidates leave as soon as a better offer comes along,” said Schoen. “The tech talent crunch will continue long after current turbulence has subsided.”