Tech employment in the US continued to fluctuate, shedding a net 2,632 positions in September, according to CompTIA’s analysis of data from the US Bureau of Statistics.

“There is no sugar-coating the off month of tech employment data,” Tim Herbert, chief research officer at CompTIA, said in a press release. “Despite the persistently high demand for tech skills on many fronts and positive forward-looking projections, there is a lag in hiring at the moment.”

In September, employer job postings for future tech hiring fell to 184,077, with software positions driving the largest volume of hiring activity. Other roles included IT project management, IT support, data analytics and systems/cloud infrastructure.

The CompTIA Tech Jobs Report also noted that tech-related roles across all industry sectors dropped by 20,000 positions, with the tech employment rate holding steady at 2.2%; the national rate was 3.8% in September.

Among industries, the largest number of job postings for tech positions occurred in professional, scientific and technical services, manufacturing, administrative support, finance and insurance and information industry sectors.

At the state level, California, Texas and Virginia led in terms of tech job postings, while Washington, New York City and Dallas were the front-runners in metro markets.

Additionally, CompTIA’s analysis found emerging technologies or jobs requiring emerging tech skills accounted for 26.5% of all tech job postings in September, up from 22% in August. Among these postings, 36% were AI-related.