Tech talent scramble

• Author: Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
• Position: Communications director at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC. He was previously a financial journalist at Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and Business Insider
• Pages: 47-49

March 2019 | FINANCE & DEVELOPMENT 47

D

arren Kidd was ma king six figures a year

working in Chevron’s tech support department

in Australia. He had never worked abroad

before and had no plans to move his young

family from their hometown of Perth, on Austr alia’s

west coast.

Across the continent and the Tasman Sea, the

city of Wellington, New Zeala nd, was strugg ling

to attract enough tech workers with t he right skills

for its fledgling star t-up scene. So officials came up

with an ambitious plan to woo fa milies like Kidd’s

to the island nation: flying in 100 high-sk illed

workers and their famil ies to the country’s capital

to interview for jobs in person with its premier

technology firms. More tha n 48,000 people from

28 countrie s applied.

Kidd, who at first wasn’t sure about living a nine-

hour flight away from his hometown, discovered a

vibrant city with a number of interesting jobs in st art-

ups and cloud computing—“a much more exciting

prospect than many of the c ompanies I was looking

into in Perth.” e 32-year-old moved to Wellington

in August to work as a developer for Xero Lim ited, a

fast-growing accounti ng software company based in

Wellington. e pay was comparable to what he had

been earning in Au stralia when factoring di fferences

in the cost of living, but the New Z ealand capital ’s

strong commitment to embracing technology workers

and helping their families transition, as well as the

quality of life, proved a major draw.

Companies are findin g their fortunes— and

futures—i ncreasingly tied to their ability to attrac t

a limited pool of qualified technology workers.

at shortage is expec ted to become more acute

in coming years as the role of tech continues to

expand across industrie s. Globally, tech spending

was expected to grow to $3.7 trillion last year,

up 6 percent from 2017, according to estimates

from Gartner Inc., a global research firm based

in Stamford , Connecticut.

Technology and science jobs in the United

States outnumbered qualified workers by rough ly

3 million as of 2016, according to data from

Netherlands-based human resources consulting

firm Randst ad NV. By 2030, there will be a global

shortage of more than 85 million tech workers,

representing $8.5 trillion in lost annua l revenue,

according to management consulting firm Korn

Ferry, based in Los Angeles.

Among the economies expected to be h it hardest

are Brazil, Indonesia, and Japan, which could

face shortages of up to 18 million workers apiece,

according to Korn Ferry’s projections. e United

States and Russia are e xpected to be short 6 million

workers each, while China could face a deficit of

12 mil lion.

“It’s pure supply and demand,” says Alan Guarino,

a vice chairma n at Korn Ferry. “Companies

are paying more, they’re hiring more, but there

is still a shortage of high-skilled tech workers.

Technology is the thread that runs across every

aspect of business.”

e economic stakes are risi ng as technology

permeates a growing number of sectors. e tec h

share of US GDP has surged more than si xfold

since 1980, according to figures from profes-

sional services fi rm PwC, although employment

in the sector has not expanded mater ially, indi-

cating the magn itude of productivity gains. With

productivity growth slowing worldwide since

the Great Recession, demand for tech-skilled

workers has remained strong, e specially outside

the United States.

ere is high demand, Guar ino says, for data

scientists, softwa re engineers, programmers, a nd

Countries are finding their fortunes

increasingly tied to their ability to

attract a limited pool of qualified

technology workers.