Linux Foundation executive director, Jim Zemlin said that open source was countercyclical to that trend. The Linux Foundation had its best first quarter ever.

Linux Foundation research SVP Hilary Carter, said in her keynote speech at Open Source Summit North America in Vancouver, Canada: "In spite of what the headlines are saying, the facts are 57 per cent of organisations are adding workers this year."

Carter was quoting figures from the Linux Foundation's latest job survey, which was released at the event.

Other research points to brighter signs in tech employment trends. CompTIA's recent analysis of the latest Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) data suggests the tech unemployment rate climbed by just 2.3 per cent in April. In fact, more organisations plan to increase their technical staff levels rather than decrease.

The demand for skilled tech talent remains strong, particularly in fast-developing areas, such as cloud and containers, cybersecurity, and artificial and machine intelligence. These are all areas which are heavily dependent on open source and Linux technologies.

So while layoffs are happening at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, and even Red Hat, "the Linux Foundation found senior technical roles were seeing the biggest cuts.

“New hiring is focused on developers and IT –managers. And companies are also spending more on training for existing technical staff, driven by the fact that there aren't enough experts in hot technologies, such as Kubernetes and generative AI, to go around."