Dive Brief:
- Unemployment rates in the IT industry are hovering near historic lows, but there is more demand for some sorts of skills than others.
- Some roles, such as network and security engineers and software developers, currently have unemployment rates around 1%.
- A recent TEKsystems survey found 81% of IT leaders say they have difficulty finding IT talent.
Dive Insight:
Experts at IT staffing and consulting firm Mondo, freelance and contract marketplace Upwork and IT education and training company Cybrary put together a list of the IT skills they predict will be in biggest demand in 2016 based on client requests. The top three include UI/UX designers/developers, full-stack web and product developers, and network engineers.
According to Anthony Gilbert, a technical recruiter at Mondo, user experience and user interface (UX/UI) designers are going to be in high demand to help make software interfaces as intuitive as possible.
Meanwhile, full-stack Web developers will be in high demand in 2016 to ensure that backend software is secure and stable for users, says Robert Dickey, group president of technology and engineering for IT consulting firm Randstad Technologies.
"Software developers are our second-highest request from clients who are looking to continue innovating with their Web-based software and applications, especially with Web-enabled languages like JavaScript and Python," Dickey said.
Finally, networking professionals will continue to be hot in 2016 to make sure that digital businesses can continue to thrive and grow, said Gilbert.
"Our clients are still relying heavily on skilled networking professionals across all verticals to make sure they're stable, always on and secure -- we don't see that going away,” he said.
