We have received quite some response to our last post, some of it visible in the comments, and some via e-mail not meant to be published**. Thanks to all who have shared their views so far!
We used the base “all enterprises” for the recruitment data – where “recruiting enterprises” might have been seen as the natural denominator, and we assumed a close link between the number of graduates in science/maths/computing and ICT workforce – where one has to admit that we don’t know where exactly the ICT specialists in the workforce come from in terms of education. Of course, in a research report this would have at least required a caveat in the footnote.
However, if at the risk of being accused of “nonsense“, it was our aim to get the discussion started.
In bullets, these are some of the issues that readers have pointed us to:
- Re the hard-to-fill vacancies statistics: Change the percentage base and 47% of the enterprises that sought to hire ICT professionals had trouble finding suitable candidates. This is maybe the opposite of the claim that there were no severe skills shortages.
- Skills shortages come to a large degree from the pace of change of technology in the industry. “There can easily in a fast evolving industry of fluid standards be severe shortages of particular specialists”.
- The figures used in the quote reflect only one of six scenarios of the CEPIS study “E-Skills in Europe: Matching Supply to Demand”. The scenario “dark days”, which appears much more likely given the economic crisis of today, claims a much lower demand and appears to be a realistic assessment of the current situation.
- Look at school education in CS, also at the allocation of public budgets for IT education in school and tertiary education.
- Societal factors such as the reputation and the competences of IT vocations
- Don’t look only at graduates from science/math/computing, but IT is becoming a significant part of other studies as well, e.g. in medicine.
- This is also reflected in shortages in the labour market where “linkers” are needed – people who combine expertise in IT with a background in law, medicine, accounting, etc.
The upcoming posts therefore will discuss how to interpret the data used: the demand side data (e.g. the hard-to-fill vacancies), the supply side data (graduates), and the status quo data (ISCO data on IT practitioners). And of course all the data that we haven’t got yet but which may or may not be available somewhere. We hope to keep getting the readers’ views on these topics!
** Given that many of our readers would be seen to respond as representatives of their companies or organisations – which would require an official endorsement process not too helpful if one wants receive frank (and quick) answers, communication by e-mail is possibly the best way to keep a discussion running. We would like to encourage readers to keep sending us e-mails if commenting publicly is not feasible.
As EXIN is working on a global basis we see that some differences in the world are to be seen, however the big picture is the same.
As we speak about the European situation I agree with CompTIA’s view that we need more e-skills instead of more persons. The gap that we see is more specific on:
-security
-relation between the business and the IT
-It Service Management, or structuring of IT processes in general
For e-skills on a basic level (let’s say ECDL-level) we see that in certain countries too many persons have lack of basic skills, more specific in those countries where education skills are significantly lower that the average.
I am speaking on behalf of nine NTAs (National Trade Associations) within Western Europe.
We jointly responded to a request by Commissionner Viviane Reding about a future European Software Strategy.
We all agreed that the skills issue was of paramount importance.
This is reflected in the “position paper” posted at the following URL :
http://www.syntec-informatique.fr/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=119&NewsID=397
Please go to the website, then click on “Telecharger le position paper”.
The first section of the paper is dedicated to the skills issue in Europe.
Francis Behr
On behalf of Eva Hagsten, Statistics Sweden
First of all, I want to emphasise that this also refers to the industrial structure of the country. We may have fewer or more people with e-skills than other countries, but the importance is to reach a balance between supply and demand at whatever level that might be.
Statistics Sweden recently published Population, education and labour market in Sweden – outlook to year 2030 (http://www.scb.se/statistik/_publikationer/UF0515_2006I30_BR_00_AM85BR0901.pdf). There you will find no real signs of an excess demand of e-skills in Sweden in the short, medium or long term. In fact rather the contrary, since many IT skills tend to be in excess supply. The only exception to this are the e-skills gained in the upper secondary school (now in shorter university educations), where a shortage is expected in the future.
In the Eurostat ICT impact assessment project we studied the effects on labour productivity from IT skills of the firm employees (chapter 8). This relationship seemed to hold only for certain industries, while a general higher education led to clear positive effects on the total factor productivity. This could be interpreted as no general excess demand excists in Sweden right now. However, in the same report, but in chapter 14, positive effects were found on the total factor productivity in particular from an increase of the share of employees with access to broadband at work. So, my conclusion is that growth and productivity could be improved by increased access while the skills needed for this access mainly seem to be there already.
In The Use of ICT in Swedish enterprises 2007 (http://www.scb.se/statistik/_publikationer/IT0101_2007A01_BR_IT02BR0701.pdf), 9 per cent of the firms reported that they had been in need of recruiting IT experts while only slightly half of these managed to find the right person. Although they gave as reason lacking competence, wrong education and too high wage claims, this could not be considered alarming since it refers to the production year of 2006 when the economic activity was very high and several industries were producing close to their full capacity and were having matching problems.
Best regards,
Eva Hagsten
Economic analysis unit
Statistics Sweden
Unfortunately skills gap is still a matter of opinion.
Standard definitions of e-Skills are not yet widespread. and therefore it’s impossible to have an accurate and scientific measurement process; as a consequence, it’s impossible to collect affordable data on required, available and missing skills.
Said that, an e-skills gap certainly exists.
Its overall effects can roughly be evaluated in an indirect way, i.e. by estimating what AICA calls the “cost of IT ignorance”.
Various statistical researches conducted in Italy in the past 4 years prove that a considerable fraction of an employee’s working time is wasted due to lack of IT usage skills or due to system malfunctioning that could be avoided if the IT experts who develop and maintain the systems were more appriaprately skilled.
More information is available (in Italian) on http://aicanet.net/attivita/progetti-e-ricerche/il-costo-dell-ignoranza-informatica
I think that what is missing in this debate on e-skills is working conditions and salaries. If it’s true that unemployment (2.5% in the U.S according to TechAmerica) is relatively low for IT workers and salaries are relatively high that doesn’t mean that compared to other industries (especially finance), in which IT workers are required, conditions were better in IT.
First, salaries are stagnating and are lower than in Finance, generally speaking. In addition, working hours are often longer than in other industries as well as the stress felt by employees. This can explain why many youngsters don’t choose that field of study. And if we add the fact that many are afraid of loosing their jobs due to delocalization (even though numbers say the contrary, I am talking about a widespread feeling not facts), it adds something to the argument. This is somehow a vicious circle: skills are needed, but since salaries don’t go up, the image of the sector deteriorates (also due to some gender and age discrimination issues) fewer people go in the field and thus the skills’ crisis worsens.
In a time of crisis like this one, it would be crucial that IT companies train workers that are redundant today in order to have them ready and embedded with the skills that will be needed tomorrow (when the crisis will end).
As for the statistics, I agree with Mr Kirkergaard and think they reflect reality if we change the basis. This is to say that a skill gap exists, in particular area but not in the whole industry (otherwise salaries would go up faster, unless the bargaining power of IT workers is too weak due to the low level of unionization in the sector).
Finally I think the skills shortage is reflected also in the charts that show the situation in different countries. If you take Germany that produced 48 (000) IT graduates in 2006 and had 672 (000) IT professionals working in the labour market that year, we can easily think there’s a gap coming up, especially if you take into account that IT specialists usually retire early (or are made redundant). If one takes the total number of graduates in the 7 countries displayed in the chart in 1998, we get 212 which is lower than the 305 in 2006. But if we take the number of graduates in 2006 as a proportion of those working in the field that year, we find that the proportion (9. 2%) is smaller than in 1998 (12.7%), suggesting the skills crisis had worsened.
This is also in line with the last Eurostat publication (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page?_pageid=1996,39140985&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&screen=detailref&language=en&product=REF_TB_labour_market&root=REF_TB_labour_market/t_labour/t_jvs/tps00172) on job vacancies (for the last quarter of 2008) which shows that 1.7% of jobs are vacant in the EU-27 (on average) while this number is usually higher for the job category where most IT workers are found (Information & Communication and Finance & Insurance Activities). If we take the countries we are interested in, we found that only Spain (0.5%) have fewer vacancies in these categories than in the rest of its economy (0.7%).
On behalf of Jonathan Liebenau
> I wrote a report, issued by the LSE and Microsoft, on this subject, in
> which my opinions are clearly stated. I do not believe that the data
> indicate what most people conclude because, as you point out, job
> vacancies are not great, unemployment among ICT professionals is not
> great (indeed both are around the level of expected friction in the
> market), and, most significantly, pay levels show no evidence
> of demand squeeze.
>
> I further point out in my report that the critical issue is that
> management needs to be able to utilize ICT skills better, have higher
> expectations from their e-skilled personnel, and pay them better than
> non e-skilled personnel.
> When that happens, more people will seek out e-skills,
> acquire credentials that assist them on the job market, and
> push for ever improved utilization of ICT in the workplace.
>
> Best wishes,
> J. Liebenau
There is a difference between lack of people and lack of skills. Currently, there is no people shortage, but there is certainly a skills shortage in the IT sector. The organisations we partner with at CompTIA, mainly the large IT vendors and manufacturers, all express the need for it skills to allow them to constantly evolve and remain competitive. One good example is the manufacturers of printers and scanners, who now develop and build multi-function devices, and whose skills requirements have evolved from a hardware repair engineer to an individual who can connect these devices onto a company network seamlessly, thus becoming a software technician. The need constantly changes and as such is challenging to track.
In almost all cases the organisations we work with are focused on identifying and retaining their talent pool and to position this asset to be in the best position for competitive advantage in the future.
In addition, the challenge we face is more one of balancing the output (the people with the skills from academia) with the job roles that these major employers have to fill. We are seeing more inclusion of what is described as vendor qualifications from Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and CompTIA, into accreditation programmes, national qualifications frameworks, and indeed in job profiles, because these are the skill sets that employers need for the job roles and the work they need accomplished, and these certifications have global resignation and track record. Companies recognise that individuals certified to these levels means they can make a contribution from day one in the workplace.
The adoption of these qualifications across the EU is imperative, as it will help drive students into study, and into career paths, that are clearly understood and meet the demand of the HR manager waiting to fill a specific job role. Employers are often involved on panels and committees designed to establish the needs of organisations from national qualifications and statistics to show how may vacancies remain unfilled do exist (hosted by e-skills.com in the UK for example). The economic crisis will not change this – more people are unemployed of course, and we are seeing more people invest in their skills, but we must make sure that the skills being delivered – the output – is recognised by, and meets the needs of, the employers, their job roles and their business requirements. There is no question that the organisations who are investing in their people and who are visionary in hiring for tomorrow’s needs will be the ones who are best positioned for recovery.
e-skills shortages are an emphatic reality. We can identify two categories of skills deficiency 1. Skills shortages where organisations have a numeric headcount shortfall and 2. Skills gaps where the existing workforce lacks skills currency and require ‘upskilling’. Around 22% of UK IT &Telecoms companies reported difficulties in attracting recruits with the right skills. Source ‘Technology Counts, IT & Telecoms Insights 2008′ from e-skills UK.
There is a significant shortage of IT graduates in the UK, 142,000 new entrants into the profession are required annually and only around 27,000 come directly from from Higher Education. Around 71,000 new entrants annually are sourced from non IT occupations and require extensive training.
Approximately 44,000 recruits annually come from sources such as returners to work after a career break or early retirees re-entering the workforce.
Many skills shortages arise from the need for a balance of technical, personal and business skills, employers stress the shortage of this growing need for hybrid skills.
A report based upon a survey of 3,000 employers across the UK found that the exising workforce exhibited skills gaps and of those reported 70% lacked required technical skills. 81% of companies with skills gaps stated that this had a direct effect on their business.
The picture of business restructuring and skills shift is complex and easily misrepresented by basic data sources. Aggregating this data across Europe can lead to misinterpretation of reality.
My first comment on this issue is that the picture is highly contradictory. Probably we are in the mid of a crisis with several contradictory features not allowing a simple interpretation. The situation has become in the last months more complicated for the financial crisis.
Let me give some comments mainly based on the observation of the Italian situation (that is only partially representative of whole Europe).
First, students in Computer Science University courses are decreasing and good students are decreasing to a greater extent. This implies that in the future we will have a smaller number of new qualified resources entering in the field. On the one hand, young professionals coming out from the University will have no difficulty in finding a work, but, on the other hand, the e-skills-gap will grow.
Second, it will grow the number of deskilled people going to cover CS-related places, contributing to a dequalification of the sector. The empoverishment of what informatics professionals are requested to do and can do is not due to this factor only, but several different factors seem contribute to it: besides the reduction of the student base, in fact, there are also the progressive commodification of ICT services offered to companies and public institutions; the decreasing number of companies and public administrations requesting for innovative services; the growing distance between research and user industry in the ICT sector, etc.
Third, the prices user organizations are willing to pay for ICT services are decreasing (also because they have discovered that what they get are commodities and they are no more willing to pay professional costs for them) so that the companies in the ICT sector are reacting to it hiring less expensive (and less qualified) people.
Fourth, professionals, whose age is over forty years, are under the menace to loose their work position.
Fifth, the decreasing quality of the services offered to the European companies and public administrations is going to affect them putting them in a weak position in the market.
In conclusion, It seems to me, that in order to understand what is happening, we need to base our evaluation of the labor market in the ICT sector, on a critical evaluation of the European market in the ICT sector. At the origin of the current crisis, in fact, there is the decreasing quality of the services offered in this market. Only within an industrial policy recognizing this crisis and trying to go beyond it, we can design strategies for facing the problems of the ICT professions.
Agoria the multisector federation for the technology industry
( see http://www.idoceo.be/jobprofiles/2007/ in Belgium investigated market profiles of ICT practitioners’ skills as a Research & Development based model and an academic model able to satisfy the demand and offers in light of Bologna process to reach a unified recognition of certifications. The “ACM” model for ICT (access to ICT, competence, motivation) in Belgium does not only look at the practitioners’ background in ICT.
The purpose of a project called ODLAC (open and distance learning access)-project in Flanders is to discover to which extent language learners, teachers/trainers/counsellors and representatives of secondary schools, universities, adult education institutions are already being trained as e-learning users and to see if the school system provides a framework for the use of ICT in language teaching. It is important to know whether, why and how language programmes already use e-learning or blended learning. In this way the guides for institutions, trainers and learners can focus on currently existing needs and they can neglect areas in which the target groups already have enough expertise.
ICT – professions/ practitioners are still considered as in demand professions in Belgium.