Editor's Note: This article was initially published by PayScale.com on December 11, 2018 and can be viewed in full detail here.
Much of the growth in the U.S. economy over the past year has been due to gains in the technology sector, a trend that was reflected in PayScale’s worker survey data. Of the 10 fastest growing jobs in our crowdsourced salary data, half were in technology professions. We saw the largest increase in full stack software developers in 2018, with a 572 percent increase in respondents compared to 2017. There is intense demand for highly skilled tech workers across industries.
The aforementioned demand for highly skilled workers has led to a critical labor supply shortage across the U.S. economy. Many employers feel the shortage of talent in STEM occupations and are placing an increased emphasis on employee experience in order to keep their high skill employees engaged and happy at work. Accordingly, we saw a 192 percent increase in Employment Engagement Managers in 2018.
While job growth will not be limited to the tech industry in 2019, the proliferation and adoption of technology across all sectors of the economy means that tech jobs will continue to boom. The highest demand job areas in 2019 will be:
- Cloud computing
- Artificial intelligence
- Big data
- Cybersecurity
- Virtual / augmented reality
- Digital marketing
- Cannabis / marijuana
We expect that jobs related to cloud computing and artificial intelligence (A.I.) will see the largest growth in the coming year. Cloud computing has become an incredibly lucrative pillar of the modern economy and an area of intense focus for the world’s tech giants. Over the next year, cloud computing software developers will be in high demand as Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud, as well as others will continue to ramp up and expand their cloud computing services to even more industries.
Cybersecurity analysts are also in luck. The collection of vast quantities of data increases the risk and cost of cybersecurity threats. The ongoing stream of massive data breaches has shaken consumer confidence and increases the threat of government regulation in the tech space. Many companies are trying to shore up their cybersecurity teams to protect their customer data. As a result, we expect that the ranks of cyber security professionals will grow significantly in 2019.
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