New US Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey now out
February 22, 2012 at 9:35 am 1 comment
The latest predictions cover through 2020, and software is still a big story. Interesting that the industry is expected to grow faster than employment. I guess software workers’ productivity is just so high?
The software publishers industry is projected to grow from $156.9 billion to $368.2 billion in real output, an increase of $211.3 billion, making it one of the largest growing industries in real output. (See table 6.) The pro- jected 8.9-percent real output growth rate also makes the software publishers industry the second-fastest-growing industry in real output. (See table 5.) Over the 2010–2020 period, employment is projected to increase 91,800, to reach 351,600, an annual growth rate of 3.1 percent, mak- ing this industry one of the fastest growing in employment. (See table 3.) With increasing technology, output will grow faster than employment. As more software services, such as cloud computing, word processing, and entering data into spreadsheets, become available through the In- ternet and the need grows for a more secure network, so will the demand for services of software publishers.
via Table of Contents, Monthly Labor Review Online, January 2012.
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: jobs, public policy.
Computing Ed Research - Guzdial's Take 
1.
Erik Engbrecht | February 22, 2012 at 11:56 am
It’s simple economies of scale. The marginal cost to a software publisher of adding another user is near zero (and trending closer and closer to it), but the revenue is whatever the market will pay.
If it wasn’t for the fact that the barriers to entry are near zero (and getting closer and closer) there would probably be a decrease in employment.