Is There Really an IT Labor Shortage?

Over the last several years a number of IT industry executives and analysts have consistently promoted the idea that there exists an ever-present shortage of skilled IT workers in the market to fill the industry’s demand. High-profile executives such as Bill Gates of Microsoft and Craig Barrett of Intel have weighed in with their opinions about this shortage of good help in the server room and at the keyboard. Most recently the theory of a growing shortage was bolstered by a December 2007 Gartner report entitled “The Quest for Talent–You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.” One of the report’s authors, Andy Kyte, went so far as to say in a statement that “(t)his is a massive and devastating skills shortage, and it is coming when there is a surge in the number of projects that are required from IT.” But there is a growing resistance to this “common knowledge” of IT labor shortages–a number of economists, academics and industry experts refute these claims, stating that there simply isn’t any hard evidence to support the idea that there is or soon will be an IT skills shortage.

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