Demand for IT skills in South Africa is still rising, but according to CareerJunction’s Employment Insights report for August 2022, the sector is observing slower growth rates.
The job platform’s research also revealed four IT skills it said would provide favourable employment prospects and sustainable “employability” in the future.
CareerJunction’s data shows IT professionals are the third-most in-demand in the country, behind finance and sales professionals.
CareerJunction noted that South Africa’s design, media and arts, and marketing sectors had seen a significant increase in demand since 2020.
It added that the demand for IT professionals had also increased over the same period. However, demand has grown at a far slower rate.
“The biggest growth in online hiring activity for this sector was evident in Gauteng, with an increase of 74% since 2020,” CareerJunction said in its report.
The report shows that hiring activity in South Africa’s IT sector increased by around 4% in July 2022 compared to July 2021, with the most sought-after skills being:
- Software development;
- Systems analysis;
- Systems and network administration;
- Technical and business architecture;
- IT project administration and management;
- Business analysis; and
- Data analysis and data warehousing.
CareerJunction’s research also revealed four IT skills that it says will provide sustainable “employability” in the future.
The skills include cloud engineering, data science, DevOps, and data engineering.
CareerJunction’s research revealed that hiring activity for cloud engineering has increased by 1071% since the first half of 2018.
“Demand for Cloud Engineers has been continuously growing. Since the first half of 2018, labour demand for cloud engineering skills increased by more than 11 times,” CareerJunction’s report reads.
Data engineering also saw a 516% increase in hiring activity over the same period.
Data engineers specialise in creating systems designed to collect, store, and transform data and large data sets.
CareerJunction posted its first data engineering vacancy in March 2016 and said demand for the skill has continuously grown since.
DevOps and data science, while on the lower end of hiring activity for the four skills, still saw demand increase by 104% and 32%, respectively, since the first half of 2018.
“Many companies have understood the potential of data science. As a result, hiring activity for data science has grown significantly in recent years and is expected to remain high,” CareerJunction said in its report.
DevOps essentially bridges the gap between software development and operations, requiring solid knowledge of the software development life cycle, process automation, and application management.
It added that hiring activity for DevOps skills has more than doubled since 2018.
The in-demand IT skills mentioned in CareeJunction’s report align with those listed in the Department of Home Affairs Critical Skills List for 2022.
The list outlines the professions that qualify for South African critical skills work visas, making it an essential resource for local businesses.
Such visas are only issued to individuals with skills or qualifications deemed critical for the country.
Motsoaledi’s list included IT skills such as software development, network analytics, systems analytics, and data management.
Article written by: Myles Illidge and published on MyBroadband
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