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January 23, 2013 By Tanya Roscorla
An IT labor shortage causes educators and government employers to reflect on how to bridge the gap.
IT jobs are growing at a much faster rate than the number of employees who are trained to fill them. Fewer people are graduating with science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) degrees. And many current IT employees are set to retire soon.
This situation has led to a shortage of skilled IT workers in 18 states and Washington, D.C., according to an America's Tech Talent Crunch report from Dice, a career site for technology and engineering professionals. States with the highest shortages are New Jersey, Texas, New York, Massachusetts and California -- and in California, many software engineers receive five to 10 job offers a day on LinkedIn.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 22 to 32 percent growth through 2020 in jobs for software developers, database administrators and network and computer system administrators. In comparison, computer science bachelor's degrees awarded from 2000 to 2009 grew just 2.6 percent overall, according to the National Science Foundation, with sharp increases and decreases during that time period, which balanced the number out.
In Massachusetts, 40 percent of the government's 1,600-person workforce will retire in the next five to 10 years, said John Letchford, CIO of the state. The talent pipeline is drying up, particularly in systems administration jobs. And as employers fight for skilled workers, the government can't compete with the private sector when it comes to salaries.
"Whether we like it or not, we're going to have a smaller IT workforce," Letchford said, "and we see that today. We're struggling to hire people in specific jobs."
Both educators and employers are looking for answers to deal with this problem. And they shared six ideas for addressing the IT labor shortage.
The issue starts with what we encourage young children to explore and develop an interest in, said Ray Bareiss, director of The Software Institute at Touro College. We could do more at an early age to spark their interest in computer science and other related fields.
Many student populations don't think they can make it in a STEM field. That's because colleges pack their curriculum with advanced math and science courses more out of tradition than anything else, Bareiss said. But that's a mistake.
He earned a Ph.D. in computer science, worked in three start-up companies and acted as a professor in elite universities including Northwestern.
But he didn't use anything more than simple arithmetic.
"We all like to believe that we work in this ultra-high-tech business where we work on the bleeding edge of technology, maybe even at the forefront of human knowledge," Bareiss said. "And the reality is that that's not what nearly anyone in the industry does. What we all do is we work in a people business that uses technology, and we often use technology very conservatively because as you get into things that haven't been done before, there's very high risk, there's a very high failure rate."
People need to reach out to students who are leery of STEM fields and tell them they can do it.
The educational process should produce people who can succeed in the workplace. But that doesn't always happen.
"When we get people into the technical career pipeline, education has to better match what the real world expects," Bareiss said.
His college is trying to do that by creating a simulation of the workplace. Students work in teams on realistic projects, produce deliverables and are evaluated. The only difference between the learning environment and the professional workplace is that faculty members coach students.
On the employer side, state government could provide scholarships to students in exchange for public service for a year or two, Letchford said. It's worked with the military and other areas, so it might be worth a shot in education.
States are going to have to figure out how to encourage the Millennial generation to work in public service. Out of a staff of 1,600 in Massachusetts' government, 32 are under the age of 30. That represents just two percent of the workforce.
"We have not been successful in driving recruitment at the entry level," Letchford said, "and that's clearly going to be a problem as 40 percent of the workforce retires."
A STEM council in Massachusetts is looking at what changes need to happen in education to address this shortage. The governor, lieutenant governor, Letchford, his human resources director and employers are working together to find a solution.
They're figuring out where they are today, what they need five years from now and the gap between the two. Then they'll work with higher education and product companies to figure out what skills are missing.
Letchford is trying to help the council look at trends, changes they'll have to manage over the next five years, and roles that should go away or be filled. They'll also consider the likely adoption of cloud services, which need to be managed by service managers, and the impact that consumerization of mobile and social technology will likely have.
"There are a lot of roles that are changing," Letchford said. "Now the goal's still the same: We've got to enable success of government, and deliver services and ultimately even transform that relationship with constituents. But it's important to lay out a plan that really kind of addresses some of those changes."
This story was originally published at the Center for Digital Education
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/education/6-Ways-to-Address-the-IT-Labor-Shortage.html
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Well, duh? About time academia caught up with the rest of us. Why enter computer science when all you read about are companies shipping those jobs abroad? Companies routinely fail to pay for training to maintain skills, and offer no incentives to stay with a company or government (except the Feds, who have unlimited money). Until recently, state governments could offer low pay, but stability and benefits, and work-life balance, but no longer. Now all they can offer is low pay, declining benefits, under-staffing leading to extra work, zero training, and potential for layoff. And, in NC, you can re-apply for your job every 4 years. Go figure.
Adding to D in NC comments, young people like the opportunity to start out in government. They're earning and learning. Grabbing all the experience they can get. But as soon as the economy flurishes and opportunity comes along, they are out of government and in the private world trading deminishing benefits, longer work days, public/political villainization for making real money and advancing careers at rates faster than government. Other than giving educational grants to entice younger people, there isn't much to keep them. Young people are not interested in making a government job a career. They're interested in making money.
Production level STEM workers (developers, admins, engineers, lab researchers, etc) earn less than business analysts, sales reps, recruiters, and contractors. They earn much less than business consultants that advocate STEM staff/cost reductions.
I'm with D in NC, if there really is an IT worker shortage, and you always have to ask whether this is propaganda meant to influence the relaxation of H-1B quotas, you have to ask why students are so reluctant to go into IT. And I think a major reason why is watching the instability that their parents' generation experienced in the last twenty years.
I work in CA. When I started as a programmer analyst in IT, our salary was on parity with PhD level psychologists and 2k/month higher than social workers (my prior profession). Now we get 3k/ month less than psychologists and 1k/month LESS than social workers. And psychologists and social workers get state paid continuing education. We don't. We get O. (ODOT) training: Own Dime Own Time or Nothing Period. I have had many years experience in Java/C statistics and research; however, I am now looking at dumping all that and going back to social work because of the pay! IT shortage? Well the salaries definitely contradict that assertion!!!
I work for state of California. Computer scientest B.S. and Post Grad. I am planning on Becoming a real estate agent. Have thought about bieng a truck driver. No $ ,benefits disappearing. This shortage is a Joke.
30 years ago I learned IBM Assembler and COBOL programming in a 12-month course in a proprietary vocational school. Two-thirds of the students in my class had their tuition paid by a federal job training program. These people were part of the cohort that evolved with the industry, though C , Java, Oracle, PHP, HTML, .NET, etc. The tuition was less than 20% of a 4-year BS Computer Science degree. The private sector employers have not (will not) pay for technical training. Government tuition subsidies are a realistic solution.
There IS NO shortage! You just want a bogus "crisis" to get more H1-B visas, to outsource, or to contract out the work and 3 to 4 times the cost of hiring public employees. It is an old lie that just keeps coming back: "We need more STEM grads!! IT skills are in CRISIS!! Sky is falling!!" Yeah, right. Then why do IT wages keep falling? Why is there age discrimination? Why are working conditions deteriorating to 3rd world levels? Why? Because there is NO shortage. Market behavior belies the truth.