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The IT skills gap: a three-front battle

Digitization Gender equality Skills supply Education and training

In November 2017, the IT skills shortage report was presented, which pointed to a shortage of 70 000 IT experts by 2022 unless special efforts are made. Unfortunately, there is no indication that the shortage has diminished. To address this, we at IT&Telekomföretagen will work even harder in 2019 to recruit from the three groups: Young people, professionals and people born abroad.

We need to be much, much better at making IT jobs attractive to young people, especially girls

Regarding the first group, young people, it has been said many times before: we need to be much, much better at making IT professions attractive to young people, especially girls. Many initiatives are being taken, but there is still too little interest and too much prejudice. The proportion of girls applying for university courses is still a fraction of those applying for law, economics and healthcare. This is not wise!

The most effective way to reach young people and get them really engaged is to meet them. We will make various efforts throughout the year, getting more member companies involved in activities that involve meeting with young people, either through our own initiatives or by joining the many good initiatives that already exist, such as Hello World and Pink Programming. This is the theme of the next IT Skills Council meeting on February 19.

Career change, unfamiliar terrain for both employers and professionals

Group two is professionals, where we want to upgrade both those already in the industry and get more people to want to make a career change into the industry. Unlike the youth track, this is a more promising solution in the short term, while it is largely uncharted territory for both employers and professionals. To be sure, we have the two highly effective options of vocational education and training (VET) and 12-week accelerated learning programs such as Salt and Academy. However, the former are relatively long-term and the latter are very short-term and heavily niched towards programming. We need to develop intermediate pathways in collaboration with universities and other training organizations, preferably in cooperation with our trade union counterparts. This is the theme of the second Council meeting on May 8.

Stopping skills expulsions

The third group is foreign-born. Here we are not fighting alone, but we are doing so in arm's length with a number of other important actors, including Almega, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise, the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Fores, Företagarna and Business Sweden. The goal for the year is not only to stop the deportation of skills, but also to restore Sweden's reputation as a talent-attracting nation. We will work continuously on this during the year.