Which way are the arrows pointing these days, up or down? Microsoft wanted to know, so it asked
research firm IDC to sum up the IT
business and its growth rate in 52 countries.
According to IT Jungle’s report on
the findings, the growth of the international IT job market over the next
few years will far outpace that of the average economy in pretty much every
locale, a sign that tech is the right business to be in, both now and in the
near-term future.
Some of the numbers:
- "IT spending in the 52 countries examined
will hit an aggregate of $1.41 trillion in 2009, and will account for 98
percent of worldwide spending." - "IDC believes that IT spending will
continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate of about 3.3 percent a year,
to $1.7 trillion in 2013. Added up, the GDP growth rate in these 52 countries
is expected to be about a third of the growth in IT spending; this is still, in
many ways, the hottest market there is, and growing more important as time goes
by even if the stock prices don’t have bubbles like they did a decade ago." - "The worldwide base of IT employees
(including corporate and government IT departments as well as techies in the IT
vendor community) will number some 35.6 million people this year, and will grow
by 5.8 million net new jobs by 2013, for a total of 41.4 million people." - "IDC reckons that 75,000 new IT companies
will be formed over the next four years, most of them small and locally owned
and operated." - "Asia/Pacific just surpassed North America
in terms of IT jobs, thanks in large part to India
and China."
— Don Willmott