Information sector employment is back to 2017 levels.
Information sector employment is back to 2017 levels. Nine years of job growth, gone.
The Information sector—tech, media, telecom, and data services—overshot its pre-pandemic trend during the 2021–22 hiring boom. No question. But the correction didn’t stop at the trend line. It blew right past it.
If the sector had simply continued its pre-2020 growth rate (~1% per year), employment today would be about 246,000 higher—an 8% gap. And it’s still widening.
The overhiring has been fully reversed. Employment is now below where it would have been if the pandemic had never happened.
These aren’t jobs that were lost. They’re jobs that never arrived—roles that were never posted, attrition that was never backfilled, junior positions that quietly disappeared from headcount plans.
What’s driving it? Not any single factor. But when output keeps growing while employment stalls—especially in sectors where generative AI is most easily deployed—it gets harder to see this as just a cyclical correction. Something structural may be underway.
And Information is just one piece of it. In my latest Labor Matters, I show this same pattern playing out across the entire white-collar economy—finance, insurance, professional services—to the tune of 3 million missing jobs.
