Certification Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 35)

Between 2010 and 2025, an estimated 77 million baby boomers will exit the U.S. workforce, as those Americans born between the years 1946 and 1965 will begin to retire in droves. “There is a fear, widespread amongst IT management, that there will not be enough skilled workers available to replace the boomers,” said Edward Gordon, author of 2010 Meltdown: Solving the Impending Jobs Crisis. What is behind this fear? The fact is that the mass numbers of retiring IT professionals represent only half of the supply problem. Recent data suggests there is simply not enough young skilled IT talent available to fill the gap. According to Cisco, the number of students seeking computer science or IT degrees has dropped by roughly 40 percent during the past three years. Gordon estimates this combination of massive numbers of IT workers leaving and fewer young people trained to enter the field will result in between 500,000 and 1 million IT jobs becoming vacant between 2010 and 2020. Why are young people not considering careers in technology as much as they did before the dot-com bust in 2001? Because, according to Gordon, “their parents are telling them, ‘Don’t get into this.’ They are telling their kids to seek more professional degrees like law and medicine.” Parents are steering their kids clear of technical education because of the outdated notion that IT jobs are all being sent overseas, despite the most recent data suggesting otherwise: According to a September 2006 study by the Society for Information Management, only 3.3 percent of 2007 corporate IT budgets were allocated to offshore outsourcing programs. Years of bad press about layoffs and outsourcing have created the perception among the general public that there are no jobs in IT. In reality, five of the top six fastest growing occupations in the U.S. are IT jobs, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and companies like Cisco have declared the IT worker shortage to be its number one prohibitor of future growth. Is the IT Community Prepared for the Labor Shortage? Despite the sobering statistics pointing to an IT skills crisis during the next 20 years, the IT community does not appear overly concerned. A recent survey conducted jointly between Buck Consultants, WorldatWork and Corporate Voices for Working Families suggests the technology industry is much less likely than other industries to see the loss of skilled workers as a significant challenge. Only 23 percent of respondents from the technology industry see the aging workforce issue as significant, compared with 66 percent from the health-care sector and 65 percent from the oil and gas industry. Even more alarming, according to the March 2008 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 35

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - March 2008

Certification Magazine - March 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Mastering IT: Choosing Between an Immediate Job and Higher Education Inside Certification Virtual World Administrators: Service Requests in Cyberspace Interface Boomers in IT: Will the Talent Shortage Affect Techies? Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - March 2008

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