IT Employment Growth Starts to Plateau and IT Talent
Shortage is to Blame
In September, IT employment increased by 0.04% to 5,376,700 jobs, according to TechServe Alliance, the national trade association of the IT & Engineering Staffing and Solutions Industry. On a year-over-year basis, IT employment has increased by 4.15% since September 2020 adding 214,200 IT workers.
Engineering employment grew by 0.32% sequentially to 2,639,500. On a year-over-year basis, engineering employment increased by 2.84% since September 2020, adding 73,000 engineering workers.
“Employment in IT continued to inch up in September but the rate of growth started to plateau as predicted,” said Mark Roberts, CEO of TechServe Alliance. With IT unemployment at historically low levels at 2% in the third quarter, IT executives are struggling to hire. The pandemic pushed companies across industries to speed up decades worth of digital transformation projects within a span of a year. As demand for IT professionals spiraled, it also exacerbated the already existing tech talent shortage.
“The time for collaboration and creative solutions to shrink the supply-demand gap is now,” Roberts emphasized. To this end, TechServe Alliance is kicking off a dialog in partnership with Society for Information Management (SIM) to explore innovative solutions to ease the talent shortage during its annual Executive Summit in November.
“IT industry leaders must join forces and think out of the box to alleviate this talent crisis or risk a slowdown in growth and adoption of new technologies,” Roberts added.
The following table presents information about the total number of jobs in certain sectors that provide a significant amount of employment for IT and engineering professionals.
Technical note: TechServe Alliance’s IT Employment Index and Engineering Employment Index are the first specific measurements of IT and engineering employment. These unique measurements of total IT and engineering employment are created monthly by studying the ongoing staffing patterns of a dozen IT and computer related occupations in 22 industries and industry sectors employing significant numbers of IT workers and nearly two dozen engineering occupations in 30 select industries and industry sectors employing significant numbers of engineering workers. Both the monthly IT Employment and Engineering Employment Indices are based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, which is subject to monthly revisions, and is revised accordingly. Both indices are also subject to periodic revisions and annual rebenchmarking that includes revisions to several years of employment data, which also may incorporate new occupational definitions. Both indices were re-benchmarked going back several years through January 2021 data. In addition, both indices are subject to minor revisions to March and April data. The next major revision will be published in February 2022.
About TechServe Alliance
TechServe Alliance is the national trade association of the IT & Engineering staffing and solutions industry. IT & Engineering staffing and solutions firms count on TechServe Alliance to keep their leadership informed, engaged, and connected. TechServe Alliance serves as the voice of the industry before the policymakers and the national and trade press. By providing access to the knowledge and best practices of an entire industry and tapping the “collective scale” of its members, TechServe Alliance supports its members in the efficient delivery of best-in-class IT & Engineering staffing and solutions for clients and exceptional professional opportunities for every consultant.
