Poland needs at least 12 years to solve the problem of the shortage of IT specialists, experts warn. Meanwhile, the deficit of programmers in other European Union countries is decreasing. According to the latest data, by 2020 it will not be 1 million but 600 thousand vacancies.
Data from the report prepared for the European Commission by Empirica, published five years ago, are still in circulation in the official circulation. The forecasts presented at that time said that by 2020, almost 1 million programmers would be a shortage in the EU alone. These estimates are no longer valid, but the new, refreshed estimates are still worrying.
We asked the European Commission for the latest data and it turned out that the demand for programmers in the European Union countries has decreased. Currently, it is said about 600 thousand. vacancies. This, however, does not mean fewer IT positions. The reduced deficit is proof of the positive effects of educating programmers. The number of jobs is growing and more and more people are joining the industry – comments Marcin Kosedowski, head of marketing at Kodilla online programming school.
The new forecast for Poland
In Poland, the deficit has been estimated at 50,000 for 5 years and will remain so until 2020. The European Commission has released no new estimates for Poland. Based on market observations, Kodilla experts prepared their own forecast. According to estimates, even in a very optimistic scenario, only around 2030 in Poland it would be possible to fill the gap related to the shortage of programmers – provided that by then the demand of companies for Polish programmers, highly respected in the world, and at the same time still earning much less than in the West. On the other hand, if the West sucks in our specialists, and this is overlapped by the demographic decline resulting in a smaller and smaller number of IT graduates, the Polish deficit may deepen and it will never be eliminated.
The statistics do not lie – we have too few graduates
According to the data of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, since 2014, no more than 12-14 thousand students leave IT-related fields in Poland. graduates of state and private universities.
In the West, the education system is much more modern than in Poland. Apart from traditional universities, there are vocational schools and programming schools. With us, more and more people use programming bootcamps, but this is just a drop in the ocean of needs. Over the past 2 years, over 2,000 people have signed up for our courses. future developers. If the graduates of all programming bootcamps in Poland were taken into account, there would be about 6,000 of them. It is still not enough – comments Marcin Kosedowski.
Most IT jobs are created in Poland
Experts from Empirica admit that the efforts to fill the huge gap in IT began to bring some results. Politicians and people responsible for education began to take an interest in the gap in the industry. According to data for the European Commission, only in Poland the number of IT specialists has increased by as much as 15% over the last four years. (from 393,000 to 452,000), and will grow by 18% in the next four years, much faster than in Spain (+12%) or Great Britain (+10%).
Poland is mentioned in the EU report as the country where, along with France and Portugal, the largest number of IT jobs will be created in the next two years. Who would cast them? Certainly not university graduates, because there are none, and not seniors, because everyone already has a job. Companies will have to hire beginners or train them themselves.
The company Empirica, which has prepared the latest reports for the European Commission, points out that no matter which programmer deficit forecasts are confirmed, the demand will continue to grow. Therefore, people from non-IT environments, not related to programming so far, will be a chance to patch the vulnerability.
According to the European Commission, one-third of companies in Poland have a problem with finding IT workers. But from our market observations, the deficit is much larger. Recruiters propose higher and higher rates, candidates can choose from existing offers, in addition, new companies are still being established and new vacancies are created. As you can see, this situation will not change for at least the next few years, so if someone is thinking about changing their career path, now is the perfect moment – sums up Marcin Kosedowski.
