Engineering employment in the US edged up by 0.21% in May compared to April for a total of some 2.5 million jobs, according to the TechServe Alliance, a trade association for the IT and engineering staffing and solutions industry. The increase is an improvement from a 6.5% month-over-month decline in April.

On a year-over-year basis, engineering jobs were down 5.4% in May, or a loss of 143,600 engineering workers.

Separately, IT employment in the US fell by 1.63% in May compared to April for a total of some 5.2 million jobs. TechServe Alliance CEO Mark Roberts said the decline wasn’t a surprise, but it was 15 years ago — during the dot-com bust — when a drop of this magnitude was last seen.

“Given that there was a long-standing labor shortage in IT preceding the Covid-19 induced decline, IT employment will fare far better than most other sectors in the inevitable recovery, Roberts said.

On a year-over-year basis, IT jobs were down 2.5%. This is better than the 11.7% decline in the total workforce.