Finding employment, even with his résumé, has been a hassle. For the roles he's applying for, it's not uncommon to see 3,000 to 5,000 other applications submitted. Given the age of his children, he'd be more inclined to change careers than relocate for a job. That, however, hasn't be an issue given the wide acceptance of remote work, Solberg said.

The problem is that tech has shifted to an employer's market, as companies have "an absolute wealth of candidates," he said, "I have never experienced a market like this in my life."

The current market for tech jobs has seen an unusually high number of layoffs nationwide.

Earlier this month, Tesla, Apple and Amazon Web Services all announced layoffs. Tesla terminated 10% of its workforce, which would affect about 14,000 people. Apple announced it was laying off 600 employees while AWS announced it was cutting hundreds of workers from the cloud-computing business of parent company Amazon.

Among the high-profile local players, Minneapolis-based software company Jamf, which provides Apple device management and security functions to large corporations, in January announced it was cutting its full-time workforce by 6%, affecting nearly 170 employees.

The U.S. tech sector has shed 74,672 jobs in 2024, adding to the more than 260,000 layoffs in 2023, according to Layoffs.fyi.

"With large tech stocks now being rewarded by Wall Street for their cost discipline rather than just growth, others have used this as an opportunity to right size, which has led to a bit of a layoff contagion, as the broader layoff narrative provides cover to any individual company choosing to do the same," said Jeff Tollefson, president of the Minnesota Technology Association.

In Minnesota, the impact has been a bit more muted. While there has been some downsizing of tech departments at Minnesota companies, it's mostly shown up as a hiring slowdown. There were 5,483 unique IT job postings by Minnesota companies this past March, compared to 16,000 in May 2022, Tollefson said.

The industry shift has affected sales at Horizonal Talent, an IT digital and creative staffing company based in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. In the second half of 2022, the company saw client requests plunge by 38%, said Jeremy Langevin, co-founder and chief executive. There was an additional drop of 52% last year, with requests falling below pre-pandemic, early 2020 figures.

Langevin said inflation anxiety and interest rate hikes crept into the minds of decisionmakers, leading to a hiring pullback. Horizonal had two rounds of layoffs itself in 2023.

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