According to a report prepared by CompTIA after analyzing the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, tech unemployment is at its lowest point in 19 years.
In May this year, tech unemployment was at 1.3%. According to Tim Herbert from CompTIA, “there is now the very real prospect of tech worker shortages affecting industry growth.”
Companies who are venturing into fields like IoT, artificial intelligence and robotic process automation are facing a shortage of workers with the required skills. Additionally, there is also a shortage of tech workers in fields like cybersecurity and technology infrastructure development.
Between April 2017 and March 2018, the tech unemployment rate dropped to 1.4%. The reason behind the slump is that industries like computer system design and custom software development witnessing the rise of positions. For example, there was an increase of 8,400 new positions in May in these fields. However, not all fields in technology are generating jobs at the same rate.
Even though there is no shortage of jobs in the tech industry, companies are suffering when it comes to finding ‘skilled’ workers for specialized jobs.
Another report from Payscale suggests that wages in the field of technology have grown by 2.3% year-over-year in the 2019 Q2. This indicates that employers are paying more to retain talent and to combat the shortage of skilled tech workers.
The falling unemployment rate and the dearth of skilled workers in tech can be attributed to several reasons like lack of adequate skill development courses, amongst other reasons.
Institutions must ensure that they are offering a combination of the right set of technical, analytic and business skills to bridge the gap between the tech unemployment rate and skilled professionals.
