Things move quickly in tech. Sometimes, too quickly. In recent days, they were moving so fast that Elon Musk and hundreds of other tech leaders posed the possibility of holding a 6 month moratorium on AI advances. This, of course, was turned down and seemed not at all possible.
All of these changes will inevitably impact the tech industry and the tools and skills that grow in demand. There is still a lot of ground to cover. Micksey reported in January of 2023, for example, that a lot of this AI does not have the needed working hands to implement the technology in all of the areas in which it can be implemented.
They wrote that in 2017, 20 percent of businesses were integrating some kind of AI in their business. In 2019, this was 59%, but today this figure has dropped to 50%. This suggests that there might be a natural slowdown based on the fact that AI requires a lot of experienced and specialized engineers and those roles might just now be filling in.
So as technology and its demand for certain skills change, we see the tech landscape shift with it.
The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is the leading certifying body of the tech industry. Every year, they compile together a statistical snapshot of the state of the tech industry through various angles.
The report provides an in-depth look at the U.S. tech industry, employment numbers, trends, and future projections. It provides information about the leading tech positions, projected growth, salaries, and variance between states and large city economies.
According to COMPTIA’s State of Tech Workforce report 2022, the leading tech occupation job categories are:
- Software
- IT Support Specialists
- Cybersecurity and Systems Engineers
- Network Engineers
- Database and Data Scientists
The report suggests that the Leading Tech Occupations are:
- Software, Programmers, Web and QA
- IT Support Specialist and Repair Technicians
- Cybersecurity, and Systems Engineers
- Network engineers, Architects, and Support
- Emerging Tech, IT Project Management and Other
- Database, Data Science, Analytics and CS
- The report highlights projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Lightcast, which suggest that in the next ten years, the tech workforce will grow twice as fast as the overall U.S. workforce.
This suggests that the digital transformation is nowhere near complete and, therefore, the demand for tech talent will continue on its upward trend.
Despite some economic uncertainty in the U.S., companies continue to move towards digitalization and automation. New tools like ChatGPT and other AI software have slowly become a more common component across many businesses and companies.
The U.S. is not the only country that is seeing growth and increased demand for tech talent. Throughout Latin America the digital transformation also sped up during covid and the time following. Today, the region has thousands of tech professionals graduating every year.
In fact, many U.S companies hired software developers and engineers from Mexico and Latin America during the U.S. tech talent shortage. It shone a spotlight into the country’s tech ecosystem and the diversity of tech professionals working in the field. Learn more about the Mexico tech ecosystem in the Mexico Tech Salary Report 2023.
Our report also shows some of the top positions and tech roles found in Mexico. There is a lot of overlap with the demand in the United States. For example, our report showed that the top roles included Full Stack Developers, Back End developers, Software Engineers, Project Managers, and Data Analysts.
Understanding Growing Tech Occupations Helps with Salary Expectations
Whether you are hiring tech professionals in the U.S. or Mexico, an understanding of the local market and tech ecosystem can better prepare employers for salary expectations. Thanks to remote work, many companies today have expanded their teams internationally, which opens up teams to new opportunities. At the same time, it poses questions about the local tech professionals, their salaries, or their expectations.
