Key points for selected IT professional occupations
- There were approximately 42,000 persons employed in the selected IT professional occupations, accounting for just over 2% the national workforce.
- Almost 60% of employment was concentrated in the ICT sector.
- Employment in IT professional occupations grew by 6.4% on average annually over the period 2004-2009 — adding a net 11,200 new jobs, 4,000 of which were created during the recession.
- Over 90% of employment in each of the occupations was concentrated in the 25-54 age group.
- IT professionals had one of the highest levels of educational attainment among occupations economy-wide: almost 90% were third level graduates.
- Approximately one fifth of overall employment in the IT occupations was female.
- Just over one quarter and one fifth of software engineers and computer analysts/programmers were non-Irish nationals respectively.
Shortage Indicators
Shortages of senior software developers (JAVA, SQL, C++, .net, VB6, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), PHP), IT security experts, network experts and IT project managers have been identified. The sourcing of high level IT skills from abroad continued during the recession, with 400 employment permits issued to non-EEA software engineers and programmers in 2009. IT experts were one of the most frequently mentioned difficult to source occupations in the FÁS/ESRI Recruitment Agency Survey. In 2009, vacancies for IT occupations were among the top ten most frequently advertised by the Irish Times and Irishjobs.ie.
IT skills are expected to be instrumental in driving employment growth in the recovery. Expected job creation in IT related areas is supported by recent investment announcements by Gala Networks (games), Alcatel-Lucent (IT applications, platforms and servers for fixed and mobile operators), Infineon Technologies AG and University of Limerick (R&D centre of excellence in applied research for semiconductor supply chain), Disney Research and CLARITY (multimedia), IBM (IT services for urban planning), Havoc (games) and Openet (software solutions for telecommunications). |
