|
|
|
|
|
IT Workforce Data Project Report Highlights
|
|
|
|
Conditions in U.S. information technology (IT) have changed significantly in recent years:
The "boom" has ended and demand for IT specialists is relatively weak. Still, some observers
maintain that the United States lacks an adequate IT workforce and policymakers continue to
debate the merits of supplementing the supply of IT people with foreign high-tech specialists
using temporary work visas, as well as developing policies to support outsourcing of IT work
to locations in other countries. The purpose of the IT Workforce Data Project series is to
identify and disseminate trustworthy statistics on information technology workers in the
United States. Credible information will enable policymakers and other stakeholders to
adequately assess need when formulating their views. Following are highlights of the
Project's report:
|
|
|
|
Recession Effects
|
|
|
|
•
|
In the last twenty years, the number of U.S. jobs in core IT occupations have more than
tripled, from 719,000 in 1983 to 2,498,000 at the sector 's peak in 2000.
|
|
|
|
•
|
About 150,000 of these positions were lost in 2001 and 2002, almost two thirds
of them in programming.
|
|
|
|
•
|
Unemployment in core IT professions began to rise before the sector's peak years,
going from 1.2 to 1.9 percent between 1997 and 1999. Levels of joblessness shot up to
3.6 percent in 2001, 4.3 percent in 2002, and an average of 5.9 percent for the first
two quarters of 2003.
|
|
|
|
Changes in Education
|
|
|
|
•
|
In years past, a majority of those employed in IT jobs were trained for other professions,
typically engineering or other scientific fields.
|
|
|
|
•
|
The number of new bachelor's students in computer science jumped 40 percent in 1995-96,
after a 5 percent increase the previous year, leading to record numbers of new degrees in IT
disciplines through 2001-2002 academic year, according to the Computing Research Association.
|
|
|
|
•
|
Federal data from the National Center for Education Statistics confirm that major
increases in IT degree awards have been recorded. However, the market for jobs for these
new graduates is now very poor.
|
|
|
|
Immigration Trends
|
|
|
|
•
|
The rates of foreign-born core IT workers doubled from about a tenth of this labor
force in 1994 to over a fifth of it in 2001.
|
|
|
|
•
|
Immigrants in the IT workforce are both younger and better educated than their native
counterparts:
|
|
|
|
>
|
In 2002, 53.3 percent of the immigrants with core IT jobs were under the age of 35,
compared to just 41.0 percent of the natives.
|
|
>
|
41.1 percent of the immigrants had graduate degrees, compared to 16.2 percent of the natives.
|
|
|
|
|
•
|
The increase between 1994 and 2002 in foreign participation in U.S. IT labor markets was
facilitated by legislation that expanded the annual number of allowable admissions of
persons with H-1B temporary worker 's visas. These higher caps are due to expire this fall.
|
|
|
|
•
|
Between the late 1980s and 2002 the use of L visas more than tripled. These
are intended to help multinational businesses by supporting transfers of executives and
managers to locations in the U.S. for up to seven years, and transfers of "specialized knowledge"
workers for up to five years. A recent Congressional Research Service report acknowledges
that firms may be using these visas to transfer rank-and-file employees.
|
|
|
|
Outsourcing Trends
|
|
|
|
The following statistics relate to a growing tendency for firms to ship technical work overseas.
|
|
|
|
•
|
The U.S. Department of Commerce reports that these transactions have grown from
under $300 million in 1995 to over $1.2 billion in 2001.
|
|
|
|
•
|
A McKinsey & Co. estimate that "projected software and service exports to the
United States in 2003-04 are expected to come in at $8.5 billion" from just India alone.
|
|
|
|
•
|
A widely cited Forrester Research report released in November 2002 predicts that
3.3 million white-collar jobs, worth $136 billion in U.S. wages, will be shifted
out of the nation by the end of 2015. This forecast includes 473,000 IT positions,
over and above those already lost to earlier movements of this kind.
|
|
|
|
•
|
Dwarfing the Forrester numbers, in July 2003 Gartner, Inc. estimated that 10 percent
of all U.S. professional jobs in IT services firms would be transferred overseas by the
end of 2004, along with five percent of the IT positions in other types of organizations.
|
|
|
|
Projected Changes in Demand
|
|
|
|
Projections assume a steady continuation of long-term trends.
|
|
|
|
•
|
2001 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is bullish on prospects for careers
in core IT data professions.
|
|
|
|
>
|
Data from the Bureau's ongoing survey of business establishments yield an estimate
of 3,276,000 IT jobs in the baseline year of 2000. Projected 2010 employment for the
same set of occupations is 5,432,000.
|
|
|
|
|
•
|
Other assessments of future demand and the growth of the industry from the RAND
Corporation and the National Science Board are also positive, but the views of
practitioners are not so sanguine. Many prominent high tech workers doubt that the United States can be a cost-competitive
source of labor in a global employment market and while IT could be dominated by North
American multinational businesses, they may not be particularly dependent on North
American technical talent.
|
|
|
|
•
|
The United States does not lack sufficient numbers of capable people who would like to
work in IT, but it does lack sufficient incentives for able people to choose scientific
and technical careers.
|