Demand for IT workers won't meet supply

Stephane Boisvert is president of Bell Enterprise Group and the official spokesperson for The Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow's IT Skills. The coalition, comprised of leading companies that rely on a strong IT workforce, is working to secure the future pipeline for professional, high-quality IT resources.

Currently, the unemployment rate for information technology (IT) professionals in Canada is less than 2% -- or one-third of what the national jobless figure is. And as heartwarming for computer types as that news is, there's even more good cheer: in the next three to five years, the demand for IT personnel will create a hiring binge with 58,000 new positions created and 31,000 staff needed to replace IT workers heading into retirement.

That's the upside, according to a recent study commissioned by the Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow's IT Skills and conducted by the Conference Board of Canada.

The downside, however, will be finding the skilled personnel to fill these vacancies. As Stephane Boisvert, head of the coalition and president of the Enterprise Group at Bell Canada in Montreal, says, "You've got a major decline in computer science and IT programs (in Canada)."

"QUITE STARK"

Boisvert isn't exaggerating. His assertion is backed by Prof. Craig Boutilier, chairman of the Department of Computer Science at U of T.

"The numbers are quite stark," Boutilier says. "It's clear the demand in the workforce is there."

It's still a bit speculative, Boutilier continues, but emerging research is starting to indicate that enrolment numbers in Canada's computer and IT programs began to drop after the high-tech bubble burst around 2000. Since then, Boutilier says, students -- and their parents -- have worried that a career in IT wouldn't be all it was cracked up to be, and enrolments declined.

Between 2002 and 2007, says the Conference Board study entitled Securing Our Future: Components of a Comprehensive IT Workforce Development Strategy, enrolments in computer engineering, computer science and software engineering declined by 22%. That's a figure that concerns Boutilier, who calls computer science and IT "key drivers" of innovation and economic development.

The most in-demand IT occupations include computer and information systems managers, e-commerce managers, electrical and electronic engineers, software engineers, information systems analysts, database analysts, programmers, interactive media developers and web designers and developers, says the study released in January.

Bell Canada got the coalition ball rolling and funded the study from the Conference Board, and shared it with interested parties across the country, Boisvert says. The coalition now has 70 members, including such heavyweights as Boisvert's own company plus CN, TD Canada Trust, Hydro Quebec, the government of Ontario and 19 colleges and universities. Funding for the coalition is coming from various corporations and the academic world.

The reason for the coalition's existence is to address -- or to have the different levels of government, industry, and colleges and universities understand and address -- this huge gap between supply and demand, Boisvert says. To do that, the coalition has already had discussions with federal politicians, Monte Solberg, minister of Human Resources and Social Development and Tony Clement, minister of health.

Boisvert and the coalition also want the federal government to understand the way current immigration policy affects foreign students enrolled in Canadian universities. As it stands, he explains, they have to leave Canada for two years following graduation before they can reapply to live here. That's not the case in other jurisdictions, Boisvert says, so foreign IT professionals trained in Canada and preferring to stay abroad move somewhere more accommodating, and take their much-needed skills with them.

QUICK FACTS

- In the next three to five years 89,000 jobs will open up in Canada for IT professionals.

- College and university enrolment in computer science and IT programs have experienced major declines since the high-tech bubble burst in 2000.

- There are more than 600,000 IT workers employed across all sectors of the Canadian economy; approximately 95% of them are full time.

- The current unemployment rate for IT professionals is 1.9%, about a third of the overall national figure.

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