The window of opportunity for IT staffing has never been so open, according to a new report, “IT Staffing: Growth Opportunities in the New World,” released by Staffing Industry Analysts Research Manager Brian Wallins and Research Associate Kevin Chen.

“Technology is fundamental in the evolution and disruption of entire industries and economies as the world transitions to digital technologies at a feverish pace,” according to the report. “The World Economic Forum estimates that more than 60% of global GDP will be digitized by next year. IT staffing demand will also benefit from strong secular trends in how IT work will be completed and compounded even further with rising skill shortages.”

It cites Microsoft Data Science showing there is the capacity for digital jobs to expand by 149 million between 2020 and 2025. That would mean a compound annual growth rate of 29% worldwide over the time period.

The report also notes the US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects computer occupations to grow 13.4% between 2020 and 2030, significantly faster than the 7.7% average across all occupations.

“Despite huge amounts of growth and investment into cloud technologies over the past 15-plus years, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg,” according to the report. “Recent estimates indicate 80% to 85% of IT workloads are still either in on-premise environments or hosted, suggesting we are still in the early innings with enormous staffing opportunities around these skill sets, particularly those around the major public cloud vendors.”

The full report with more data on the trajectory of IT staffing is available to corporate members of SIA.