North American IT shops may well be facing a staffing perfect storm. Two big challenges are certain - a mass retirement of baby boomers that promises to deplete staff and starve many companies of critical skills, and a shortage of replacements due to a smaller crop of college graduates and a dramatic decline in students majoring in and planning to enter IT-related fields. The impact of a third challenge - the inevitable, but largely unpredictable trends toward outsourcing and offshoring - remains uncertain.
There are a number of steps that companies can take now to address current requirements and many others that corporations, in partnership with government organizations and educational institutions, must take to pre-empt even greater challenges in the future. The first step, however, is to do something that only a small percentage of US corporations have done - acknowledge the nature and extent of the problem and the need to address it.
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