If you’ve seen the latest employment statistics, you know you can thank the tech sector for adding more jobs. Despite a softer employment gain in the U.S. overall, tech employment posted an increase last month, according to two separate reports.

The U.S. economy added 157,000 jobs in January, and IT accounted for 22,100 of those jobs, according to IT labor analyst and research firm, Foote Partners.

In a separate analysis, the January increase was estimated at 15,800 jobs, or 0.37 percent sequential growth, according to TechServe Alliance.

January accounts for the largest monthly hiring increase that the Foote Associates has seen in five years, according to David Foote, CEO for the firm. IT jobs have been on a sustained growth run since last February, with 132,300 IT jobs added since then.

In evaluating IT growth overall in 2012, Mark Roberts, CEO at TechServe, said while there was “respectable” growth last year, the IT jobs growth engine was in a holding pattern in the fourth quarter.

“While the secular trends for strong IT employment growth remain in place, we need to get through the current period of pervasive uncertainty,” Roberts said in a statement. “Once the uncertainty dissipates, I fully anticipate we will see robust growth in IT employment throughout 2013 and beyond.”

As more organizations move data to virtual servers, cloud computing has been a growing skill needed by employers hiring talent to develop, manage and secure information online.

According to an IDC report sponsored by Microsoft Corp., with as many as 7 million cloud-related jobs available worldwide, the demand for cloud-ready IT workers will grow by 26 percent annually through 2015.

Cloud computing has already begun changing how IT delivers economic value to countries, industries and businesses, although it is still emerging as a computing style.