IT Skills Demographics

New data from IT job board Sapphire Technology reveals significant patterns in the availability of technology jobs in different regions in the United States. For example, more than 58 percent of all available tech jobs in Austin, Texas, were in software development, primarily due to the large number of startup companies in Austin. In Chicago, project management positions accounted for more than 52 percent of job listings, which Sapphire's Mike Giglio attributes to the large number of mergers that have occurred in recent years. Software development skills were also in high demand in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the D.C. metropolitan area, and Sacramento, Calif. Meanwhile, one-third of available IT job listings for the Los Angeles area were for desktop support. In fact, there were more listings for help desk jobs than for any other type of technology work in Los Angeles. Giglio says that companies in the Los Angeles area are so fast-paced that if anything happens to the systems they are working on they need it fixed right away and they staff their companies accordingly.