U.S. IT employment continues on a growth path, rising 6% from a year ago to reach 3.68 million employed, according to the most-recent Bureau of Labor Statistics employment survey.

IT unemployment was 2%, according to an average of the past four quarters of BLS data, including its most recent third-quarter results. That unemployment rate is down from 2.2% in 2006 and as high as 5.6% in the third quarter of 2003. The total IT workforce, employed and unemployed, also grew about 6% from a year ago. The unemployment rate in management and professional jobs overall was also 2.0%.

The biggest job growth categories continue to be software engineers, computer scientists and systems analysts, and IS managers. Software engineers, the largest category, grew 8% from a year ago and make up a quarter of all IT jobs. Computer scientists and systems analysts also grew at 8%, making up 22% of tech jobs, while IS managers grew at 12% and now make up 12% of jobs. Two categories shrunk: programmers (15% of IT jobs) declined 5%, while support specialists (8% of jobs) declined 4%.

Network and system administrators (6% of jobs) grew 14%, network and data communications analysts (6% of jobs) grew 8%, and database administrators (3% of jobs) grew 27%. The BLS data is based on its household surveys, and job categories are based on interviews about what tasks respondents do.

The jobs statistics continue trends that have marked IT employment's slow recovery from a fierce downturn from 2002 to 2004, when IT employment fell below 3.3 million. In the second quarter of this year, IT employment was 3.58 million, based on an average of four quarters of data.