IT Skills Up, Up and Away

IT skills are in demand and increasingly scarce.

So says a report from The Wall Street Journal.

According to the report, companies across the U.S. economy last month hired IT workers at the sharpest pace in more than four years.

The number of new IT jobs in all industries expanded by an estimated 253K positions in February, the largest one-month gain since November 2015.

That pushed the unemployment rate for IT occupations down to 2.3 percent, and it was software/app developers, computer user support specialists and computer systems engineers and architects that continued to be the most in-demand tech skills sought by employers.

CompTIA, which conducted the research, indicated that blockchain, AI, machine learning, and other emerging tech skills were also helping to add to tech employment gains, with this categories increasing 74 percent last year.

The Journal cited staffing firm Robert Half International Inc. as also indicated more than 80 percent of some 2,800 tech-hiring decision makers at U.S. companies said finding talent was a challenge, and that the average CIO salary had hit $300,000 this year.

As Steve Ballmer used to scream, “Developers, developers, developers!”

You can start or continue to build your own tech skills at IBM Developer.