The study said the expansion nearly doubled the 78,900 tech jobs added in the first half of 2005 and represents the strongest job growth of any six-month period since 2001. Still, the tech job growth lags the 3.5 percent growth of the U.S private sector over the same period.
At the individual sector level, technology manufacturers added 33,100 net jobs in the U.S. the first half of 2006 for a total of 1.37 million jobs, up 2.5 percent, the second consecutive year that high-tech manufacturing is seeing net job growth.
The high-tech services sectors (consisting of communication, software, and engineering and tech services) added 107,000 net jobs over the same period for a total of 4.44 million jobs, a 2.5 percent rise. Engineering and tech services added the most net jobs, 49,800, followed by software services, which added 44,500 net jobs, according to the study.
Even the communications services sector saw its first net job growth since 2000— 12,700 jobs, or 0.9 percent, from January to June of 2006, the study said.
"The good news is that the U.S. high-tech industry is adding jobs for the second year in a row, and adding jobs across all tech sectors" said AeA's president and CEO, William Archey. "But job growth is by no means as strong as we believe it could be, and it continues to lag growth in the private sector as a whole. Strong tech growth benefits our economy because tech industry wages pay 85 percent more than the average private sector wage and support numerous other jobs."
The report can be downloaded from the website.