The U.S. unemployment rate hit 5.1 percent in August, the lowest in seven and a half years, although actual job growth seemed to slow. Those in the technology industry know it’s a robust labor market; the unemployment rate for tech workers hit 2.9 percent in August, a decline from 3.4 percent in July (and a tad below the 3.1 percent hit in August 2014). Over the past several quarters, programmers and software developers have enjoyed some substantial dips in their respective unemployment rates, although the numbers have been far more mixed for Web developers, network and systems administrators, support specialists, and others. Computer and electronic manufacturing continues to lose jobs, thanks in large part to slackening demand for hardware such as PCs. “The continuing trends of ‘everything-as-a-service,’ ‘software-defined everything’ and the proliferation of devices and applications requiring integration and support have spurred hiring by a wide range of IT companies,” Tim Herbert, senior vice president of research and market intelligence for CompTIA, wrote in a statement accompanying that organization’s August report about the state of the tech industry. CompTIA’s data suggested that the tech industry had managed to generate jobs in 14 of the 18 months between January 2014 and June 2015. Does that mean the unemployment rate for tech pros will continue to dip? It’s impossible to predict; while the tech industry remains strong, it’s still subject to macroeconomic trends. At the same time, it doesn’t seem as if the appetite for tech pros who specialize in cloud-based services or software development will slacken anytime soon.