Published on the 18/06/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Australia will need another 100,000 skilled ICT workers by the end of the decade if the full productivity benefits of technology are to be liberated…
A landmark survey of the Australian ICT landscape from the Australian Computer Society in association with Deloitte Access Economics has found that demand for ICT staff will grow 2.5 per cent a year until 2020 – much faster than the general employment trends which are expected to rise by 1.6 per cent over the same period.
The report, Australia’s Digital Pulse, reveals that 600,000 ICT professionals were employed in Australia during 2014, and forecasts that to rise to 700,000 by 2020.
While recent measures of IT recruitment trends has forecast a slowdown in demand, at least for the next few months, Deloitte and the ACS has taken a longer term view and explored the anticipated skills demand based on the productivity promise of new technology if deployed across the whole of the Australian industrial landscape.
That is what will lead to the 100,000 ICT professionals uptick.
However finding those staff remains a challenge. The report noted that there are about 10,000 ICT workers each year arriving on 457 visas which allows a stay of up to four years. Net arrivals of overseas ICT workers totaled 19,000 in 2014.
Although there has been some recent improvement, enrolments and completions of ICT undergraduate courses still remain too low to fill anticipated ICT skills demand, although some of the slack has been taken up by engineering graduates who are shifting into ICT roles partly in response to the slowdown in the resources sector.
Professor Roy Green, dean of the business school at the University of Technology Sydney, was interviewed for the report and noted that there had been a 3 per cent uptick in ICT enrolments last year but he warned; “Silicon Valley companies are doing worldwide recruitment drives, so we are losing our best graduates to overseas when we don’t have enough to begin with.”
While the report was supportive of the new national curriculum which encourages more technology education and competence in schools, it noted that this has yet to be endorsed and widely rolled out, leaving other nations such as Israel and the UK ahead in terms of school ICT programmes.
The importance of digital technologies to the economic wellbeing of Australia was made clear by the report which noted that the contribution of digital economies to the nation was A$79 billion last year compared to $50 billion in 2011. It also noted that “productivity growth will be increasingly driven by digital technology in the future.”
As long as there are the ICT professionals to drive the digital technology.
John O’Mahony, Deloitte Access Economics director said: “The contribution from ICT to Australia’s economy, and our successfully meeting our productivity challenges, are at risk if we don’t ensure there is an adequate workforce equipped with the necessary ICT skills. We urgently need to boost both awareness and opportunity around ICT skills development.
“Despite the strong growth in demand, with a projected gap of more than 100,000 ICT workers in the next five years, and declining rates of ICT graduates, we are facing a serious problem.”
Brenda Aynsley, ACS president said: “It is high time that we have a stronger focus on digital technologies, particularly computational thinking and coding, in schools right from a foundation level, in order to prepare our next generation workforce for the future. Otherwise we are at high risk of falling behind the rest of the world in an increasingly globally connected economy.”
