In a case of who’d have thunk it, turns out IT workers in Australia have a massive image problem, and that’s going to royally fuck up our workforce in the future.
Pop culture portrays IT workers as socially awkward gamer geeks who spend most of their time wilfully ignoring the crumbs in their keyboard. And this totally unfair and not at all justified portrayal is actively affecting the number of Australians studying IT.
Think tank Deloitte Access Economics compiled a report that specifically cited the negative portrayal of IT workers as a possible cause of the low enrolment rate in IT courses, which has dropped significantly since the early 2000s.
The report, entitled Australia’s future workforce?, found that we’ll need an extra 100,000 IT workers by the end of the decade – which we’re not tracking to have.
And if we don’t get more bums onto IT lecture seats, we’ll be facing a “serious problem,” according to Deloitte director John O’Mahony.
The report also cites also Australia’s lack of digital technology education in schools, which the federal government has already committed millions to help rectify.
Australia’s digital economy contributed $79 billion in 2013-14 (up from $50 billion in 2011) and its employment is forecasted to grow by 2.5 per cent year over the next give ears (compared to the economy as a whole, which will grow by 1.6 per cent)
Basically: there’s a lot of jobs, and they pay a lot of money. Go get ’em, tigers.
via Fairfax
