SIA’s latest US Staffing Industry Forecast: September 2020 Update details stabilizing trends in IT temporary staffing and sustained outperformance relative to most other staffing segments during the pandemic. Similarly, IT is proving to be among the most resilient sectors across talent platforms, or the “human cloud.” This is a rapidly growing segment within talent acquisition technology where work arrangements are established and completed via digital marketplaces. These platforms include online staffing, online work services and crowdsourcing (readers may refer to SIA’s “The Lexicon” for definitions of terminology used across the entire workforce solutions ecosystem).
According to Oxford’s Online Labor Index, an economic indicator that provides an online gig economy equivalent of conventional labor market statistics, the number of projects and tasks in “Software Development & Technology” are down just 4% year-to-date when comparing the 28-day moving average for the first week of 2020 against the latest reading in the backend of September. This is the largest occupational segment among talent platforms, according to the index. In comparison, “Creative & Multimedia,” the index’s second largest category and “Writing and Translation,” its third largest, have declined by 15% and 20%, respectively, over the same period. Online Labor Index data is updated daily and its interactive tools are accessible within SIA’s website.
Even prior to Covid-19, IT was the clear leader among occupations on talent platforms. According to a recent SIA survey of 13 B2B human cloud firms representing 27% of the global market, IT occupations comprised 41% of total gross spend in 2019. This was more than twice the size of the next largest occupational segment. The reasons for both the rising prevalence of IT work sourced through talent platforms and the occupational group’s resilience across talent platforms and temporary staffing are intimately intertwined. Notably in the current environment, IT projects are generally more adept at being performed remotely, making it far less susceptible to disruption stemming from the health crisis. Other strong secular forces are at play as well, such as an acceleration in digital transformations across industries and an agile, flexible IT workforce becoming increasingly strategic as tech cycles shorten, the breadth of required IT skill sets swells and as organizations become more efficient in the utilization of talent.
Talent platform (B2B) gross spend by occupation, 2019
Source: SIA
For corporate members interested in learning more about talent platforms, the many secular trends supporting them and how these services are converging with traditional staffing models, we recommend our recently released and comprehensive The Gig Economy and Talent Platform Landscape report.
