Nemertes finds growing shortages in key areas
Gloomy news on the IT employment front is likely to be obscuring significant shifts in the IT talent pool—leading to talent shortages for the next three to five years. A recently released study by privately held Hackett projects a loss of nearly 2 million back-office infrastructure jobs, including help desk and data-center support staff. That aligns with ongoing Nemertes’ research. Organizations have slashed IT staff by an average of 17% in 2009, and are projecting increasing movements towards managed services. Downsizing’s not the whole story, however: Nemertes also finds growing shortages in key areas; fully 60% of IT shops say they’re experiencing skills shortages, particularly in applications development, VOIP/UC convergence, network and storage infrastructure, and security. And there’s ongoing demand for folks who are skilled cross-functionally, with expertise in architecture, strategic planning, and project management.
