Informational technology job postings in the Wilmington region were up in March, continuing the upward trend for job postings this year.

The Wilmington Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) had 289 IT job postings in March, up 23.5% from March of last year, according to an NC TECH Association report released Tuesday.

The Charlotte/Concord/Gastonia MSA led in North Carolina with 12,531 job postings. Raleigh and Durham/Chapel Hill came in behind Charlotte.

“There were more open IT jobs in March than in any month in 2018 or thus far in 2019,” said Brooks Raiford, president & CEO of NC TECH, in a news release. “The increase over the same period a year ago outpaces the U.S. rate of increase, a pattern we’ve seen for quite some time.”

The report shows that software developers lead in IT job postings in the state with 7,895 job postings in March, up 76.6% from March 2018.

Other occupations include network and computer systems administrators and computer systems analysts.

In 2018, the Wilmington area had 1,192 IT job postings, up 16.4% from 2017.

With the growth of IT job postings in the Wilmington region, some area employers have identified the recruitment of tech talent as an important aspect for the growth of their businesses.

Earlier this month, leaders of local tech startups Apiture and KWIPPED Inc. said the city’s lifestyle should be marketed more to bring tech talent. This was during a new initiative by the Wilmington City Council to visit businesses in the community and promote collaboration between the two.

“How do we get N.C. State students, Carolina students and Duke students interested in coming to this town?” Apiture president Christopher Cox said during the city council visit. “Engineering talent these days is hard to find. All over the country, people have multiple job opportunities. Good technologists and good software engineers, they have options, right? So how do you convince them that this is the city to be in and this is the company where they want to spend their career? We work on that all the time, but I think there are probably things we can do collectively, as a business and with you guys to help make that happen.”

Some of the biggest drawbacks in convincing talent to move to Wilmington is the fact that it is a smaller city, but there are ways the city can be more accessible for both younger and older workers, Cox said.

Another issue Apiture often faces is the trailing spouse problem, in which one partner follows the other for a job opportunity but then must find a job themselves. Bringing more tech and other companies in the Wilmington area can help alleviate this issue, Cox said.

The NC TECH report also shows that some of the top hirers of tech talent in the state include Oracle, IBM, Bank of America and Cisco.