| The question to ask now is what types of occupations will grow in the next ten years? Professional and related occupations will grow the fastest and add more new jobs than any other major occupational group. From 2000–2010, a 26 percent increase in the number of professional and related jobs is projected, a gain of 6.9 million. Professional and related workers perform a wide variety of duties, and are employed throughout private industry and government. Nearly three-quarters of the job growth will come from three groups of professional occupations—computer occupations, health care practitioners and technical occupations, and education, training, and library occupations—which will add 5.2 million jobs combined. We can break this down further and say what specific occupations will grow the fastest over the next ten years. Figure 6.2 lists the main growth by occupation type. Note that out of the top 10 fastest-growing occupations, eight are IT-specific categories. Figure 6.2. The fastest growing occupations for the period 2000–2010. Source: U.S. Department of Labor—Bureau of Labor Statistics 
They are listed here, along with the percent growth expected over the next 10 years: -
Computer Software Engineers, Applications, 101 percent -
Computer Support Specialists, 98 percent -
Computer Software Engineers, System Software, 91 percent -
Network and Computer Systems Administrators, 86 percent -
Network Systems and Data Communications Analysts, 80 percent -
Desktop Publishers, 71 percent -
Database Administrators, 70 percent -
Computer Systems Analysts, 62 percent There is no question that these very large numbers of people will be needed, but asks the question, "If there are chronic shortages of IT staff now how will the industry recruit these new people?" There is no clear answer to this question. |
