The digital skills gap remains a pressing issue in the tech sector in 2023, and new research suggests that the gap has actually widened over the last year. The World Economic Forum continues to publish suggested strategies to help businesses close the skills gap – all the more urgent in the context of new information from the International Data Corporation predicting that digital transformation investment will reach $3.4 trillion in 2026.
And while advances in artificial intelligence might seem to represent possibilities of bridging the gap in some areas, AI is in fact another site where the skills gap is already playing out. According to Salesforce, just 1 in 10 global workers currently possesses AI skills.
To gain a clearer sense of the state of the skills gap, Tenth Revolution Group company Revolent has gauged cloud tech professionals across a range of ecosystems on two critical questions relating to the skills gap.
1. Does an IT skills gap exist in your community?
Yes – 63%
No – 18%
Not sure – 20%
2. Reflecting on the last twelve months, would you say the skills gap has…?
Increased – 52%
Decreased – 12%
Stayed the same – 31%
Not sure – 5%
Responding to this new data, Revolent Chairman and CEO James Lloyd-Townshend said: “These new statistics put fresh numbers to the state of the skills gap – which is important because we have to make sure we’re regularly assessing the scale of the situation, to see what’s working and what isn’t.
“This new data tells us that the skills gap is still very present, which isn’t necessarily unexpected. I don’t think anybody in the sector is expecting to resolve it overnight. What is quite shocking, however, is the fact that a majority of tech professionals are saying the skills gap has actually increased in the last year. This is not good news.
“It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why the skills gap has widened, despite all the increased focus we’ve seen on solving it across the business and tech sectors. What we can say is that if we’re going to solve it, we absolutely have to be preventing it from worsening in the present.
“A multi-focal approach seems like our best bet—whether that’s expanding the talent pool by recruiting from untapped demographics or thinking about how we can support existing professionals to pursue re-skilling and upskilling.”
Methodology
Statistics were derived from the latest (2022-2023) careers and hiring guides offered by Tenth Revolution Group and its recruitment brands. The total sample size for this study was 921 for Question 1 and 574 for Question 2. Respondents were tech professionals working across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Business Applications, NetSuite, and Salesforce.
