Wednesday, February 26, 1997

National shortage of workers to fill high-tech jobs expected to get worse

By RORY J. O'CONNOR

Knight-Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - At least one in every 10 high-tech-related jobs available in the United States is vacant because there aren't enough trained people to fill them, an industry group estimated in a study released Tuesday.

This national shortage will likely worsen because not enough people are getting college degrees in fields like computer science and engineering, according to the report.

That could seriously hurt the U.S. economy by pushing high-wage work abroad or slowing growth of the U.S. high-tech industry, which accounts for about a sixth of the nation's economy.

"There is a dramatic problem in finding skilled (information technology) workers," said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America in Arlington, Va. "There are at least 190,000 vacancies in our industry today ... and the number could grow very rapidly."

The labor shortage also stands to hurt businesses in other industries and the government, because their dependence on computer systems forces them to compete for workers to program the machines, run the networks and manage information systems.

Those hard-to-fill jobs aren't among the 190,000 counted in the report, titled "Help Wanted: the IT Workforce Gap at the Dawn of a New Century."

At the heart of the problem is the fact that the number of computer science graduates from U.S. universities has declined 43 percent in the past decade.

While at a loss to explain why, Miller placed some of the blame on the nation's schools for not properly training children in math and science. He also said the industry had done a poor job of overcoming the image of computer professionals as "nerds" and of attracting women, African Americans and Hispanics to high-tech careers.

But the problem is not just supply; it is also demand. A major contributor to the shortage is the explosive growth of the computer industry, especially the part of it related to the Internet, he said. Last year, some 1.1 million Internet-related jobs were created in the country, he said.

The ITAA report said no simple or quick solutions were apparent.

"The challenge is so fundamental it will take a united effort by government at all levels, education at all levels, and industry to find appropriate long-term solutions," Miller said.

Backed by several members of Congress, the ITAA called for a national study of the problem, additional spending on education, more emphasis on technology in schools and increased public/private partnerships to train workers.

"I view (the report) as a clarion call for Congress to take action," said Sen. John Warner, R-Va., co-chairman of the Senate information caucus. "We must re-examine the means by which we the American taxpayer dollar and give it to education. This says to me, Uncle Sam, you're not spending these dollars right."

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(More information on this report can be obtained on the Internet at http://www.itaa.org)