The outbreak of COVID-19 has shifted the working paradigm globally. Where the majority of businesses were used to operating from an office environment, COVID pushed 88% of businesses worldwide to work remotely.
This unexpected surge in remote working has undoubtedly increased the demand for improved tech within businesses. As a result, the IT industry has needed to quickly rise to the demands.
So how has the U.S. IT industry been impacted by COVID-19? Where is the industry today? This article will take a deeper look into the IT industry and analyze its position in the U.S. job market.
Key Points:
- IT leaders report increase in median spends of IT budgets
- Candidate pool broadens for IT and engineering roles due to remote working policies
- COVID-19 triggers IT and engineers to innovate in new ways to facilitate new normal
- Skills shortages among certain IT and engineering skill sets including cyber security
Remote working across all industries
The demand for remote working tools surged with the announcement of the U.S. lockdown in March earlier this year.
As a result, global IT leaders have reported a median additional spend of 5% to IT budgets to meet the demands of remote working teams across the world, and IT engineers have been working to facilitate the transition into remote working.
Although the sector also saw a sharp decrease in vacancies as experienced across most industries, the IT industry has continued to steadily recruit throughout the pandemic to meet the demands.
Remote working among IT professionals
The remote working trend hasn’t overlooked the IT industry. In a recent survey conducted among IT leaders, 86% of respondents stated that they had moved a significant portion of their workforce to remote working. Additionally, 43% of the respondents anticipate that more than half of their employees will work from home even after the pandemic has subsided.
Among the list of American tech companies that are offering remote working are Microsoft, BBN Technologies, Infosys, Gartner and Salesforce. Many tech companies will likely adopt remote working on a long-term basis. Industry experts suggest that remote working was an inevitable move of the future and that COVID has merely acted as an accelerator towards the trend.
From a recruitment perspective, the switch to remote working will mean agencies can span their search for the right candidates across wider territories, and will be less bound by location.
COVID IT innovations
Recent research has shown that within the IT sector, Saas marketplace platforms have experienced a 5% increase post-COVID with companies investing in new software.
Platforms such as Oracle, Workday and Salesforce are among those IT platforms benefiting from these COVID-induced technology demands.
The implementation of remote working and also the need to create technology to facilitate the new normal has forced IT and engineering professionals to innovate in a variety of ways including the following:
- Enhancing cyber security
- Developing contact tracing systems
- Implementing cloud-based business solutions for remote working
- Improving in-store shopping experiences
- Designing telemedicine
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The current IT job market
In order to meet the new technological demands, companies were initially mostly hiring temporary IT and related engineering professionals at the outbreak of the pandemic. However this has started to shift as Q3 began to see more permanent IT positions. This is possibly due to companies understanding the gravity of the pandemic, and that the demand for new IT innovations is going to be a long-term requirement..
Increased demand in IT jobs
In September, Monster witnessed an increase in full-time, permanent job adverts for the following IT and engineering roles:
- Software developers
- Network and computer systems administrators
- Computer user support specialists
- Computer systems analysts
- Information security analysts
- Web developers
Monster’s data coincides with the recent BLS report that stated 12,000 jobs had been added in September for computer systems design and related services.
IT skills shortages
There is one area in particular among IT companies that is in desperate need of professionals. Research shows that 41% of IT organizations have experienced an increase in cyber attacks since the outbreak of the pandemic. This is likely to be as a result of the fast transition to remote working life, whereby businesses have been forced to quickly adapt without having the luxury of thorough preparation.
The significant dangers posed by cyber attacks mean that Cyber Security is a priority and is currently the most in-demand skill, especially within the cloud and data security space.
According to the data, other skills shortages among IT companies include the following areas:
- change management
- Enterprise architecture
- Technical architecture
- Advanced analytics
Salaries to reflect remote worker living costs?
California residents have also moved to states where the cost of living is cheaper, whilst still maintaining their California salaries. It’s been suggested that companies are already threatening to cut salaries in such scenarios, although the legalities behind doing this are unclear.
Outsourcing to overcome skills shortages
Despite the difficulties faced, it’s clear that there still remains a pertinent demand for IT and related engineering professionals, with a particular emphasis being placed on the call for cyber security experts at present.
One way in which recruitment agencies are responding to the demands is by outsourcing their candidate sourcing. The support from an outsourced workforce has proven to yield better results insomuch that outsourcing companies have the time and labor-force to strategically map out and reach a wider pool of candidates at a much quicker rate than a solo recruiter.
Not only does this accelerate the results on any given vacancy, but the time gained also enables recruiters to focus on simultaneously generating revenue on other open vacancies.
To learn more about our outsourcing recruitment services, join us at the Techserve 2020 virtual event.
The challenges for IT professionals
It is also important to note some of the challenges being faced by the IT industry as a result of all the recent socio-economic changes.
Increased competitiveness
Although the increase in remote working has generated new custom for the IT sector, it has also increased the proportion of IT vacancies open to remote workers. This has the implication of making the job market more competitive for IT professionals since it broadens the pool of eligible applicants.
Additionally, the IT industry has also experienced an overall decrease in vacancies year on year, but the number of job-seekers has remained consistent in certain areas. In California for example, there was a 34% decrease in the number of technical job vacancies, however the number of applicants had not decreased, creating a more competitive environment for the Californians. As a result, California tech job-seekers are now more than twice as likely to look for work out-of-state, in comparison to workers in other states.
Salaries to reflect remote worker living costs?
California residents have also moved to states where the cost of living is cheaper, whilst still maintaining their California salaries. It’s been suggested that companies are already threatening to cut salaries in such scenarios, although the legalities behind doing this are unclear.
Outsourcing to overcome skills shortages
Despite the difficulties faced, it’s clear that there still remains a pertinent demand for IT and related engineering professionals, with a particular emphasis being placed on the call for cyber security experts at present.
One way in which recruitment agencies are responding to the demands is by outsourcing their candidate sourcing. The support from an outsourced workforce has proven to yield better results insomuch that outsourcing companies have the time and labor-force to strategically map out and reach a wider pool of candidates at a much quicker rate than a solo recruiter.
Not only does this accelerate the results on any given vacancy, but the time gained also enables recruiters to focus on simultaneously generating revenue on other open vacancies.
To learn more about our outsourcing recruitment services, join us at the Techserve 2020 virtual event.
