Job Title Trends in Computing Fields

The Bureau of Labor Statistics creates a listing of job titles, average salary, number of jobs, and projections. Their taxonomy groups people into 750 job title categories, in some odd groupings.

Few categories are set to show declines, particularly in any job type even vaguely related to the IT field. There are a few exceptions, but these tend to be positions operating a computer rather than knowledge-work. What I found interesting is that the only place I’ve seen reference to these positions is in obsolete thrift-store computer books from the ’80s, where these are commonly listed as career paths in IT once one learns Turbo Pascal or Fortran.

The BLS projects jobs related to computer hardware to grow at a much slower pace than software jobs, an unsurprising, but striking trend. Also fascinating is number of self-employed engineers is significantly lower than average, suggesting that freelancing is not as common as one might think, or that people change titles when becoming self-employed, due to increased responsibilities.

Individuals with overlapping tasks often have very different titles, for instance, a Graphic Designer and Software Engineer might both be proficient in Javascript. Contrary to the attention it is receiving in popular culture, the BLS does not see much potential for being a 3-D printer operator (row 4) but “Big Data” fits well with the last row, and it pays very well. Personally, I wish more people became DBAs (we’re hiring!) and it looks like growth in that field is strong.