COVID-19 Industry Impact Report: Information Technology Talent Needs

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Minnesota’s IT industry was deep into a talent shortage. Last year, RealTime Talent forecasted a shortage of 10,500 qualified IT workers in the Twin Cities Metro alone by 2024. Like other industries, new job posts for the past few weeks are down compared to the same time last year – but not by much.

The graph below shows the amount of new job posts from March Week 3 to May Week 1 in 2019 and 2020 statewide.

The amount of IT job posts available during the frame of March Week 3 – May Week 1 (jobs that were active and may have been posted before this time frame) are only slightly down in 2020 compared to 2019 statewide.

The top 3 IT occupations with the most demand during this frame last year are the same occupations with demand for the last seven weeks (the top ten also remain the same, albeit different order).

Below is a list of employers with demand for IT occupations for the time frame of March Week 3 to May Week 1 2020.

Below is a list of staffing agencies with demand for IT occupations for the time frame of March Week 3 to May Week 1 2020.

Jeff Tollefson, President & CEO of MNTech

Jeff Tollefson, President & CEO MNTech

As the discussion about reopening the economy and returning to the workplace grows, it seems that the need for qualified talent in the IT industry will remain.  Software Developers have long been in demand.  Jeff Tollefson, President and CEO of MNTech says, “The world runs on software.  From the large enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that help manage business operations and automate many back-office functions to the apps and websites that allow people and businesses to connect, software is the enabler.  This is why talented software developers that can help write code and support software-enabled digital transformations are in such high demand.”  And by the way, the median salary offered in these job posts for Software Developers: $132,600.

– Phil Arellano, RealTime Talent Project Manager for Workforce Development phil@realtimetalentmn.org

Job posts data collected from Gartner TalentNeuron www.wantedanalytics.com on May 7, 2020 for the time-frame of March 15, 2020 – May 2, 2020 and includes posts from Staffing Agencies.