Staffing Industry Analysts offers a range of resources to help our clients benchmark their firms’ financial and operational performance relative to competitors. These include the monthly Pulse Survey, semiannual Staffing Industry Benchmarking Consortium, and annual surveys issued broadly to staffing firms, large buyer organizations and temporary workers themselves. For larger staffing occupational markets such as IT, we often have a sufficient sample size to slice the findings to offer segment-specific data. However, each of these surveys is designed to be generally applicable across skill sets, and as such do not encompass many metrics that relate specifically to the IT staffing market.
To fill that void, this year we debuted the IT Staffing US Benchmarking Survey, which improves visibility into the IT staffing market in the US by gathering data from the past two years on volume and rates by skill set or occupation. It also explores industry trends and practices with regard to dynamics such as VMS/MSP prominence, statement-of-work (SOW) engagements and client vertical market demand.
A total of $2.1 billion in 2015 IT temporary staffing revenue was generated among the 17 firms that participated in the inaugural survey, representing aggregate year-over-year growth of 9.3%. Among the 10 specific IT occupations provided as options, software developer accounted for the largest portion of revenue captured by the survey, at 21%, followed by project manager at 12% and IT infrastructure roles at 8%.
The highest year-over-year revenue growth rate by a wide margin was seen in cyber/data security, at 43% — driven by a 46% rise in hours billed — followed by cloud architect, at 12%. The only two occupations that saw revenue decline were software QA/testing, -5%, and help desk/PC support, -1%. Demand for staffing in these skill sets has been particularly affected by the headwinds of automation and offshoring, offering a possible explanation for the drop.
Survey respondents were asked to rate each occupation based on its current recruiting difficulty on a 1-5 scale, with 5 indicating extreme difficulty. Cloud architect and cyber/data security were rated as the most challenging positions to fill, at 3.8, followed closely by data architect/big data at 3.6. At the opposite end of the spectrum, with a rating of 1.8, was help desk/PC support.
Average recruiting difficulty, 1-5 scale
We also inquired about use of the H-1B visa program, one avenue for US companies to access foreign workers to address domestic talent shortages. It is no surprise, therefore, that three of the four occupations rated highest for recruiting difficulty also showed the greatest levels of H-1B utilization: cloud architect, 17%; software developer, 12%; and data architect/big data, 10%. The exception was cyber/data security, at 5%, which may see lower H-1B employment due to restrictions on non-US citizens obtaining the necessary security clearance to work on government contacts.
While the full report of results is available only to firms that completed the survey, Corporate Members can access the summary report which presents some findings in addition to those covered in this article. If you would like to receive an invitation for your firm to participate in the 2017 survey, please send me an email at abraswell@staffingindustry.com.
