Australia faces IT workers drought

Australia – Australia will soon face a major shortage of IT professionals that could lead to the slowdown of its national productivity, predicts new research.

A recent report by the Australian Computer Society (ACS) has revealed that the IT professional shortage could grow by 29% by 2010 to over 14,500 full-time positions waiting to be filled. This could increase to over 25,000 by 2020 unless policies relating to improvement of the capability, ethical behaviour and professionalism of current and future IT employees are changed.

“Even using the most optimistic forecasts for levels of domestic graduates and of migration into Australia, IT skills shortages will continue or get worse at least until 2012,” said John Atkinson, who heads Charles Sturt University's (CSU) School of Business and Information Technology.

According to 2006 data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, IT is one of the main contributors to productivity gains in all sectors of the Australian economy. Hence, Atkinson believes this is a worrying trend considering “the strategic importance of IT sector to the Australian economy”.

“It is also economically more significant than agriculture, defence, education and mining, with over 5% of Australia's full-time professionals and technicians employed in ICT,” Atkinson added.