Communications of the ACM
IT Jobs Will Grow 22% Through 2020, Says U.S. BLS
Credit: Tatango
By 2020, employment in all computer occupations is expected to increase by 22%, with some IT fields faring better than others, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). While offshoring will hurt the growth of programming jobs in this decade, the expansion of health care IT and mobile networks will in turn increase demand for software developers, technical support and system analysts. Demand for software developers will be the strongest in this period, with increases ranging from 28% to 32%. The agency's forecasts, particularly for technology-related jobs, are often controversial because they can't account for rapid market changes and tech disruptions. However, its estimates are often cited in various policy debates in issues ranging from U.S. educational needs to immigration policy.
The outlook across IT occupations varies. Demand for database administrators is expected to increase by 31%, adding 33,900 jobs in this decade thanks to a need to make use of an ever-growing mountain of data. For IT managers, employment is projected to increase 18% by 55,800 jobs to 363,700 jobs by 2020. BLS said growth in the health care industry and the need for more IT security might help increase IT management jobs. The weakest IT growth area is computer programmers: the number of people employed as computer programmers will increase by 12% through the decade, from 363,100 in 2010 to 406,800 by 2020. Offshoring was blamed for relatively weak growth in demand for computer programmers.
The BLS projects the number of computer systems analysts to grow by 22% through 2020, thanks to the growth of mobile networks and the spread of healthcare systems. The BLS forecasts that the number of software development jobs will increase by 30%, or 270,900, through 2020. In this area, the fastest rate of growth (32%) will be for system software developers, and the lowest rate (28%) will be application developers. In 2010, there were 347,200 network and computer systems administrators employed in the U.S. and employment in these occupations is expected to grow 28%, or 96,600 jobs, by 2020. The BLS lumps information security analysts, Web developers, and computer network architects into a single category, which it said employed a combined 302,300 in 2010 and was due to grow by 22% to 367,900 by 2020.
From CIO.com
View Full Article
No entries found