Bleak IT Jobs Picture Points to Education Necessity

Dim news of the U.S. unemployment situation seems inescapable. The official unemployment rate stands at 9.5 percent. Despite trillions (with a big T) of dollars spent on stimulus programs, the sluggishly recovering recession isn’t doing much to spur jobs creation.

Comparatively speaking, the tech sector’s unemployment rate – roughly 6 percent – isn’t bad. During the depths of the recession, IT vendors shed tens of thousands of workers, and solution providers eliminated jobs as spending grounded to a halt. While IT spending is slowly climbing out of the recession doldrums, jobs are not following suit.

According to a New York Times article, the technology sector isn’t playing its traditional role of being the rapid catalyst for recovery and jobs creation as it has in past economic downturns. Record profits and steady earnings increases are doing nothing to prompt many of the larger tech companies into expanding their payrolls and drawing down the number of people on the unemployment rolls.

Surprisingly however, many U.S. companies reporting difficulty in finding the right skilled technology people for more than 600,000 jobs. Despite recruitment and best efforts to market these positions, they simply cannot hire people who meet their requirements and expectations.

The New York Times concluded that the culprit is widespread commoditization. Programming, research and development, manufacturing, and even technical support were once skills that provided specialists with high-paying jobs and endless possibilities. No more. These skills are held by people around the world who are able to crank out products and projects with high quality at a lower price. As a result, U.S. companies are shipping more of these traditional, intellectual jobs overseas to China, India and other emerging economies, and are performing fewer here at home.

Likewise, technology finally has achieved one of its primary goals of providing seamless automation. Virtualization, cloud computing and autonomic systems are conspiring to not just reduce costs, but also make many IT jobs permanently obsolete.

The one place where available IT jobs and a fresh talent pool are intersecting is colleges. Many companies are filling jobs with students rather than seasoned professionals for two reasons: more up-to-date-skills at lower salaries and benefits expectations.

Under this cloud, many technologists and IT industry veterans are defecting to other industries that either have growth potential or – at the very least – stability. If a job can’t be outsourced to Bangladesh, it’s probably a safe bet. But don’t be so sure about that. Healthcare is seemingly providing one of these safe havens, since patient care is expressly a local business. But as technology adoption increases, physicians and care providers will be able to conduct exams, administer treatments and monitor progress at long distances through the magic of telepresence.

Does all this signal doom and gloom for those in the IT industry? That depends.

First, The New York Times report centered mostly on large enterprise and IT vendors. Large firms have an easier time shipping jobs overseas and automating systems. Larger organizations also have an easier time shifting responsibilities on diminished workforces and contracting temporary or consulting help for their IT efforts.

For small businesses, ‘though, the picture is somewhat mixed. SMB organizations – particularly solution providers – are actually seeing either a neutral or growth in jobs. According to the recent CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index, 37 percent of IT businesses plan to add new jobs over the next six months. The forecast was made in anticipation of increased IT spending among all businesses to refresh aging IT infrastructure and adopt new automation technologies. And it’s not like IT businesses are sitting idly. CompTIA research reveals that nearly half of those businesses not hiring say they would add jobs if it facilitated or resulted in new business and growth.

What all this adds up to is one conclusion: Anyone who is sitting idling by as the world and technology evolves is destined for the scrap heap of humanity known as the permanently disenfranchised. But that’s a choice, not a certainty. While many among the unemployed say they’ve kept their skills up through education, they actually have just kept their core skills fresh. Many didn’t branch out into new fields, such as parallel programming and writing in Ruby on Rails. Likewise, IT companies need to hone their skills in new markets and opportunities, such as healthcare, green energy and integrated communications. 

The widening disconnect in the IT job sectors extends into every facet of our industry. It’s not a problem exclusive to vendors and application developers. Eventually, this education gulf will affect VARs and managed services providers who fail to maintain their skills and value propositions through certifications and accreditation programs, such as those offered by CompTIA and other major vendors. Solution providers often view certifications as a cost-center that detracts from their core business, but they are actually a means to an end of keeping resellers current with technology developments and trends.

When planning business development and budgeting, solution providers would be wise to heed the need for learning and set aside time and money for training. A dollar spent today may just assure that dollars will keep flowing into the future.