“The IT skills gap” gets talked about as a single, uniform shortage, but the data shows something more specific and more useful: technical hiring difficulty is not evenly distributed. Some specialties are in a structural, worsening deficit. Others are trending toward oversupply as automation eats the routine end of the work. Knowing which is which changes how a staffing desk should spend its sourcing hours.
Where is the skills gap most acute?
Cybersecurity is the clearest case of sustained, structural scarcity. The global cybersecurity workforce gap reached 4.8 million unfilled positions in 2024 against an active workforce of only about 5.5 million — a gap that grew 19% year-over-year even as headcount barely moved, up just 0.1% (ISC2 2024 Cybersecurity Workforce Study). That scarcity is showing up directly in projected growth: information security analyst roles are projected to grow roughly 29% from 2024 to 2034 — the fastest growth rate among major developer-adjacent occupations tracked by the BLS (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).
What about AI and data roles?
Also acute, and accelerating fast. LinkedIn's “Jobs on the Rise” data ranked AI Engineer the #1 fastest-growing job title in the U.S. via member transitions for two consecutive years, with AI Engineer postings up 143% year-over-year and overall AI/ML postings surging 163% from 2024 to 2025, reaching roughly 49,200 U.S. positions (aggregated LinkedIn data via Job Agent analysis). CompTIA's State of the Tech Workforce 2025 found the job-postings market is now “dominated by AI skills hiring,” with nearly 125,000 active AI-related postings recorded in a single month (CompTIA State of the Tech Workforce 2025). Data scientist employment is projected to grow 33.5% to 36% from 2024 to 2034 — among the fastest-growing occupations in the entire U.S. economy (BLS Employment Projections 2024-34). The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 confirms the pattern globally: AI and big data top the list of fastest-growing skills employers seek, and analytical thinking remains the single most sought core skill, ranked essential by 70% of companies (WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025).
Which technical roles are trending the other direction?
Routine, legacy coding work. The BLS projects computer programmer employment will decline 6% from 2024 to 2034 — the clearest quantified example of automation pressure on lower-complexity coding, even as adjacent higher-skill roles like software developers (+15-16%) and information security analysts (+29%) grow strongly over the same period (BLS Employment Projections). GitHub's Octoverse 2025 data shows AI tooling is actively reshaping which languages and skills are in demand — a new developer joins GitHub roughly every second, with AI cited as the primary driver behind shifting language popularity on the platform (GitHub, Octoverse 2025).
Why does this bifurcation matter for how agencies source?
Because a single sourcing strategy applied uniformly across every technical requisition wastes effort on both ends of the spectrum. For structurally scarce specialties — security, AI/ML, data science — the candidate pool is small, almost entirely passive, and competed over aggressively; success depends on continuous, proactive outbound sourcing that finds people before a competitor does. For roles closer to the commoditizing end, the challenge shifts toward accurate skills verification rather than sheer reach, since supply is more available but distinguishing genuine capability from surface-level keyword matches becomes the harder problem, especially as AI tools change what “passing” a screen even signals.
What does the broader workforce shift mean over the next decade?
The BLS projects roughly 317,700 average annual openings across all computer and information technology occupations through 2034, factoring in both growth and replacement need (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — Computer and IT Occupations). Computer and mathematical occupations overall are projected to grow 10.1% from 2024 to 2034 — the second-fastest-growing occupational group in the U.S. economy, more than three times the all-occupation average (BLS Employment Projections 2024-2034). The overall pie is growing; the skills gap is really a distribution problem — too much specialized demand chasing too small a specialized pool, while generalist supply grows relatively more available.
Is the skills gap likely to close on its own as more people enter tech?
Not on current trends. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects continued strong demand growth across core technical occupations even as the specific skills required inside those occupations keep shifting — a dynamic that keeps the effective gap wide even when raw headcount in the technical labor force grows. ISC2's cybersecurity workforce research puts the global gap at 4.8 million unfilled roles, a figure that has persisted despite years of visible investment in training pipelines, bootcamps, and university programs (ISC2 2024 Cybersecurity Workforce Study). The practical implication for hiring teams is that the gap isn't primarily a headcount problem to wait out — it's a specialization-matching problem that gets harder, not easier, as required skill sets fragment further.
UPPER's POV: A skills gap this uneven can't be solved with one sourcing playbook. UPPER scores every candidate against the specific requirement — not a generic keyword match — which means a security engineering req and a general application-development req get fundamentally different candidate criteria automatically, and outreach concentrates where the real scarcity actually is instead of spreading effort evenly across roles that don't need it.
Key data points
- The global cybersecurity workforce gap reached 4.8 million unfilled roles in 2024 (ISC2 2024 Cybersecurity Workforce Study).
- AI/ML job postings surged 163% year-over-year to ~49,200 U.S. positions (Job Agent, citing LinkedIn data).
- Data scientist employment is projected to grow 33.5%-36% from 2024-2034 (BLS Employment Projections).
- Computer programmer employment is projected to decline 6% over the same period (BLS Employment Projections).
- ~317,700 average annual IT openings are projected through 2034 (BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook).