How Is The Current IT Job Market?

edisonAU on 24/07/2025 - 09:04
Last edited 24/07/2025 - 12:25 by 1 other user

I asked this question around similar time for the last 2 years. It is time to see how everyone is doing and whether you have much success in finding a new job?

I am on a 2-year fixed term contract, with 1 year left to run. I decided to take a pay cut from my previous contract at Transport for NSW, in exchange for 2-year stability. I have recently spoken with my ex-colleagues (contractors), and they were all let go, citing lack of funding.

Then I saw the Transport for NSW news, and realised that they will not be doing much hiring anytime soon:

I applied for a few jobs this month after being approached by a number of recruiters, but then radio silence from them. I would have thought that in July that's when the budget is set for the upcoming financial year, there will be flurry of jobs, but I don't see it in the market.

How are you all doing?

Education & Work

Comments

  • geekcohen on 24/07/2025 - 09:09

    I'm doing fine in my IT role.

    How many years of experience do you have? and what sort of IT roles? IT is very very broad so depends on the type of roles you are applying for and then how your experience fits against other candidates.

    It took me probably 6 months to finally land a role after interviews. I also didn't proceed with some interviews because they didn't align with my family circumstances. Many people want to work in the office full-time which I was not onboard with or it wasn't local enough. In the end, landed a remote job, full time, from home and fits family very well.

    • UrbanNomad on 24/07/2025 - 09:49

      what kind of position do you hold ? thks

      • geekcohen on 24/07/2025 - 10:52

        The position title is "IT Manager" but its kinda a DevOps Manager mixed in with Server Infrastructure manager and Web Manager. Its a bit of jack of all trades.

    • edisonAU on 24/07/2025 - 10:42
      +5

      I am Senior Project Manager with 18 years of experience. I have to say the last couple of years the market has been the toughest I have seen.

      • salmon123 on 24/07/2025 - 11:29
        +3

        Senior Project Manager

        I can't speak for your exact role or skills or organisations you work for, but in general the project manager role has largely been eliminated.

        It's been covered ad-nauseum in my reddit and linkedin feed - "project managers" were glorified status updaters. Management finally cottoned on to this and realized a person leading a team of engineers can do the job just as effectively and they'd rather hire more engineers than project managers. Now with the AI boom, there's plenty of tools around that can analyse JIRA/Confluence/etc to generate status reports. Heck, they can even analyse git code to see what the progress is like.

        I don't see the market for project managers recovering any time soon. Might be time to reskill or switch industry to something like construction where they still need "project management" skills.

        • mskeggs on 24/07/2025 - 12:11

          Are you talking about a project manager for an internal team?
          I am seeing plenty of need for project managers delivering to customers. Updating a Gantt chart or Jura board isn't really the job.

          • salmon123 on 24/07/2025 - 13:11

            @mskeggs:

            Are you talking about a project manager for an internal team?

            Not specifically. Even internal teams will have internal customers/stakeholders that they're accountable to.

            I am seeing plenty of need for project managers delivering to customers

            I guess it depends on the organization/industry. Perhaps my comments were a generalization based on my social media feeds.

        • kanad on 29/07/2025 - 21:22

          I have been in the tech industry for over 25 years. In most large enough places there will be a need for a PM when the change touches multiple departments/divisions both tech and non-tech to manage dependency. In the agile world they are getting the PO and SM to do this role. So OP should start getting into a SM/Agile Coach role and certifications. It is not actually agile but then there is no true Scotsman.

          What is gone are Technical PMs looking only tech delivery and planning for a single project.

  • jv on 24/07/2025 - 09:37
    +1

    How Is The Current IT Job Market?

    Which area?

    • edisonAU on 24/07/2025 - 10:42

      I am in Project Management, but just want to hear about other fields in IT as well.

      • jv on 24/07/2025 - 10:43
        +2

        want to hear about other fields

        They all vary.

  • tenpercent on 24/07/2025 - 10:32
    -4

    Did you ask chatGPT first?

  • mrkorrupt on 24/07/2025 - 10:54
    +1

    was made redundant January, i been applying on at least one job per day over the last 6 months, Got Azure, CSPM CWPP, M365, MS100 and Ms700 and had about 4 interviews and no success. It is very touch and alot of jobs are black holes, I think I get an unsuccessful from under 20%. the rest radio silence.

    • carlJack on 24/07/2025 - 12:04
      +1

      same here. I was jobless for more than a year. One of the worst things I have experienced.

      • edisonAU on 25/07/2025 - 11:16

        Sorry to hear that. I hope you are OK. How are you managing it?

        • carlJack on 25/07/2025 - 11:43

          I am ok. Thanks for asking. I got a job 2 months ago exactly after 12 months of being made redundant. Financially I was ok. I had enough savings and made use of redundancy payment. Wife was more more worried than I was. I knew my time will come. It was just a matter of time. I just had to keep trying had no other choice.

    • tenpercent on 24/07/2025 - 17:16
      -3

      One job application per day sounds like a lot. Perhaps fewer applications with more effort per application would yield more success?

    • edisonAU on 25/07/2025 - 11:15

      Sorry to hear that. I hope you are OK. I know a number of my ex-colleagues are on the same boat as you.

  • Drakesy on 24/07/2025 - 11:03
    +3

    50% of migrants seems to be angling for an IT role. This has decimated wages.
    The other 50% are irish FIFO workers who are some of the hardest working labourers i've seen.

  • trapper on 24/07/2025 - 13:14
    +7

    My company is delusional.

    They let go of most of the experienced developers, brought in a few junior hires from India, and now expect KPIs like “boost productivity by 50% using AI tools.”

    • salmon123 on 24/07/2025 - 13:21
      -5

      My company is delusional

      I think you're delusional.

      Management is doing exactly what they're being paid for - boosting earnings-per-share before the next quarterly profit announcement. You think they'll be there in 12/24/26 months when sh*t hits the fan?

    • s12345 on 18/08/2025 - 17:37

      My experience also. Boards want to reduce headcount cost because AI. The rank of managers below who need to implement the cost reductions know it, but they also know AI tools aren't efficiently deployed in their organisation and won't be for some time, while self-interest makes them want to preserve the same number of people under them. So they do the only thing they can do, replace the senior with the junior, even though a senior dev easily has the efficiency of a half dozen junior devs (if there is a comparison).

  • coffeeinmyveins on 24/07/2025 - 14:29
    +1

    "IT Job Market" is like saying you work in "logistics". There's so many different areas that you need to be more specific.

  • JsMIT on 24/07/2025 - 17:14
    +3

    I've been working as a development lead and solution architect in large government system development for 35 years. 10 yrs as a permie and 25 yrs as a contractor. Never been out of work for more than a month and that only happened twice in 35 yrs. Both here and Europe. The IT market in what i do has always been a yoyoing market for work but its really become tough after the Covid shutdown because of closing down and re-opening of our boarder with the massively increase of skilled IT workers looking for work. The biggest problem with jobs now is that during Covid, all employers both private and government over hired and is now cutting jobs. With a lot of people including the extra skilled migrants looking for work at a time when employers are shedding jobs instead of hiring is making competition for available jobs high but at the same time rates/wages go down significantly (30%+). Also job seekers are not adjusting their wage/job expectation to match the current market. If you got an IT job now, just do what ever you need to keep on to it until the condition gets better in a few years time.

  • paulh1977 on 25/07/2025 - 15:53
    +1

    I have recently been made redundant as part of a simpification phase in a large organisation. My role has been in IT/Digital, and I received a good payout for my time there and thought i would be able to get role pretty quickly. 6 weeks later - 50 plus roles applied for and 2 interviews. Everything else has either been radio silence or rejection within a week. Even looking at roles that close on seek, some of them are getting 600 applications which is bonkers. Is really is becoming an employers market with so many people looking. I am hoping to pick up something in the next few weeks before I go sitr crazy at home!!

    • alexdagr8 on 26/07/2025 - 21:01
      +1

      Albo opened the floodgates on immigration and guess what professions came into Australia that we didn’t need (spoiler it it was NOT tradies)

  • DrPotato on 26/07/2025 - 19:52
    +1

    I recently looked elsewhere and got a few offers which is a lot better than 2023 when the market was completely dry for me. I was able to use these offers to negotiate higher salary.

    I have also conducted hiring rounds at my company not too long ago. There has been a big drop in quality of applicants. Perhaps they're overreliant on AI? These applicants are usually migrants with degrees from unknown colleges in Australia or overseas. A few with Masters in IT couldn't answers questions about Git. So while there may be a lot of applicants for a role, I would say majority are unqualified. Only ~5% of the applications we received were worth progressing to interviews and even in those some applicants had vastly exaggerated their skills and experience.

    Market is subdued but it will recover at least for experienced individuals. Juniors are screwed though, at least until market is thriving which nobody can predict when/if will happen.

    • alexdagr8 on 26/07/2025 - 21:02

      Lost in translation.

    • JsMIT on 05/08/2025 - 17:42

      I think the problem with poor quality of applicants has always been there. But previously, the competition haven't been there and a lot of poor applicant has been picked up because there was no one else available, these position has to be filled and they fill them with the best they can get at the time. Gov always say there is a massive short fall in skill workers especially IT. But that is no true as they get stats from something like Seek where it shows that there are 1000s of job ads for IT vacancy. However, the different Ads you see on these job sites are for the same job with multiple agents putting on ads that 1 vacancy. Recently, my work was looking for 1 .Net developer and there was over 25 different ads for that 1 job in Seek.

  • krapola on 05/08/2025 - 22:14
    +2

    Worked in tech for 20 years now. Job market is very slow. Lots of cost cutting to ensure businesses remain financially viable given economic headwinds etc

    Last year we had around 10 tech roles open. This year we’ve got 2.

    We have 20% growth targets this year but will struggle to hit 10a% growth. As a result, we’ve had to reduce our opex to ensure we’re not overspending for rest of the year

    Companies around the world are just adjusting to reduced spend and increased uncertainty around the world. It’d be fiscally unwise if they didn’t.

  • wetsandwich on 20/08/2025 - 17:39
    +1

    Its absolutely horrendous. Redundancies everywhere and even when applying for jobs I'm very well qualifed for I'm lucky to even get any acknowledgement that I applied, let alone a rejection. Doing ok in my current role but bored of it, wouldnt be fun to go through this from a position of being unemployed.

  • OzzyBoy1 on 30/08/2025 - 22:19

    Had major issues at my work. Management changes, lack of enough engaging work, things were getting very toxic to the point it was impacting my health and well being. Just couldn’t take it anymore. I resigned. I am in Sydney. Would be interesting to see how things pan out.

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