Virginia Is America's Tightest Tech Job Market, Newly Published ENGAGE Talent Research Reveals

CHARLESTON, S.C., July 24, 2018 — Virginia is the tightest job market in the United States for technology roles, newly published research from ENGAGE Talent shows.

ENGAGE Talent provides an AI-powered platform to combine talent mapping, competitive intelligence, passive candidate sourcing, and outbound recruiting, providing powerful predictive insights about candidates to recruiters and talent acquisition professionals.

The research was performed by ENGAGE in conjunction with Greenwich HR. The findings are revealed in a new report, “America’s Tightest Job Market for Tech Workers.”

In addition to discussing scientific findings about the current state of the job market, the report also proposes a new framework for understanding and analyzing labor supply and demand. The framework is made possible by insights achieved through ENGAGE’s AI-powered approach and technology.

The states with the top 10 tightest job markets–ranked by the ratio of the supply of IT professionals to open jobs requiring IT skills–are:
1. Virginia
2. Maryland
3. Massachusetts
4. Georgia
5. Illinois
6. Pennsylvania
7. Florida
8. California
9. New York
10. Texas

“These results come as a surprise since California and New York traditionally were the tightest markets, but barely made the top 10 here,” ENGAGE Talent CEO Joseph Hanna said. “These results have serious implications for employers needing to hire or retain tech talent in these states–especially since the job market as a whole is exceptionally tight.”

Other key findings of ENGAGE Talent’s data analysis include:
– A measurable relationship exists between the supply of workers with a given skill and their job tenure–as the supply of people with a given skill increases one percentage point, the median job tenure for people with that skill increases by almost one month.
– A measurable relationship exists between skill supply/demand ratio and salary–for every 10 percent change in the supply/demand ratio, the salaries being offered increase by an average of $1,645.

ENGAGE Talent’s proposed new framework for understanding labor supply and demand argues that there is a better way to measure supply than the data that analysts have traditionally relied upon–the total supply of labor in a certain class (e.g. everyone with a certain skill or who performs a certain function in a given geographical area). Instead, ENGAGE says it makes sense for supply to only measure people who are interested in engaging in a job change discussion–those who are likely to change jobs in the near future. Across the United States, only one in 10 tech professionals is rated as “highly likely” to engage with a recruiter about a new job, according to ENGAGE’s AI-powered technology.

Applying this new framework to the tech job market reveals that while California has the largest total supply of IT professionals, Texas, ranked No. 2 in total supply, has a higher percentage of professionals who are predicted to be interested in engaging in a job change discussion.

“The traditional approach to labor supply/demand analysis can overstate the practical supply of potential new workers for employers, which as a result can understate the challenges that employers have with acquiring talent. This new framework excludes people who are unlikely to move from their current job, giving us a more accurate view,” Hanna said. “This new framework is one example of how we at ENGAGE are seeking to add to the science and understanding of recruiting and workforce planning.”

About ENGAGE Talent

ENGAGE is the world’s first AI-powered platform to combine Talent Mapping, Competitive Intelligence, Passive Candidate Sourcing, and Outbound Recruiting in one brilliant Talent Targeting and Engagement engine.

ENGAGE enables active recruiters to efficiently source from a live stream of over 100 million passive candidates or enrich their own CRM and ATS candidates with predictive, AI based insights. ENGAGE continuously monitors your candidates and alerts you with predictive availability signals when a candidate is likely ready for a new opportunity.

Recruiters who leverage ENGAGE’s predictive analytics are able to more than double their candidate engagement rates.

For more information about ENGAGE, please visit http://www.engagetalent.com.