Tech-savvy jobs are increasing and so are wages

Dive Brief:

Digitalization is a worldwide phenomenon that's resulted in a "hollowing out of occupational distribution," according to a Metropolitan Policy Program report of 545 occupations covering 90% of the workforce since 2001. The tasks employees are expected to do change as digital technologies increasingly augment or perform entire workloads.
Software and application developers, followed by computer system analysts and financial managers, were given the highest scores for digital knowledge and importance of digitalization in a job. It is not coincidence that these occupations' salaries are also the highest paying at $104,300, $91,620 and $139,720, respectively.
Mobility is also growing at a rapid pace as the global annual sales of personal computers rose from 700,000 in 1980 to 260 million now. As for storage, it took AWS about seven years to successfully store one trillion "digital objects," but now the company has the capabilities to store tens of trillions of digital objects, according to the report.

Dive Insight:

Digitalization is a movement still sweeping the enterprise. The global tech economy stands as the third largest global economy with $6.3 trillion in spending in 2016.

Tech brings efficiency to the workplace across all industries, and companies are dependent on its implementation. More than 32 million employees work in "highly digital jobs" and 41 million employees require "low digital skills," according to the report.

CIOs are in a "current state of upgrade" and are forced to accommodate the growth in tech use. But digitalization comes at a cost even when IT budgets remain the same. Companies are working to deploy new technologies like AI and Big Data analytics, but the misuse of such technology will cost up to $6 billion in market capitalization.

While technology can aid or replace remedial tasks, it also needs proper handling. About one-third of executives said missing skills is the reason for stalled digitalization while about 65% of IT professionals claim a lack of cloud-based skills jeopardizes or halts overall innovation.