What are the key factors that will affect the IT job market in 2016?

If you ever browse through job placements online or even glance at the window of a high street recruitment agency you’re likely to see an abundance of IT positions ranging from database analysis to programming roles - at least moreso than ever before.

Demand within the information technology industry is growing at a rapid pace making it one of the top industries to work in and is worth almost £60 billion alone. With schools having taught IT as early as the late 90’s and almost every higher education institution offering IT degrees there is no shortage of people with a basic to advanced skill set of using a computer to some level.

However, there is a revolution happening in our UK schools. In September we saw an introduction of coding to the computing curriculum for a variety of different primary and secondary schools. The existing ICT curriculum focused on computer literacy from word processing to using an Excel spreadsheet. The aim now is to not only improve on that but to also teach children all levels of coding and to program applications or apps. So whether that’s learning Perl or C++, the important factor here is that the IT sector is growing and the next generation of programmers, developers and analysts could have an important head start to a career in IT.

Companies Rely on Information Technology

From large corporations to small independent businesses there’s always some kind of affiliation with information technology whether it’s operating a website or having a dedicated technical support team. A small company may operate an e-commerce website that may require a small team which could include a web developer, a PHP or Java programmer as well as testers and content editors. Not only would a larger company field a bigger team but they may also need web analysts and dedicated SEO or digital marketing teams to increase and assess online business to its highest potential. For example, this year we have seen Google introduce new rules to penalise non-friendly mobile sites restricting their presence in organic searches, therefore the company might want to add mobile developers to their team to ensure their search rankings aren’t affected. Companies can’t just sit back and keep doing what they do, they need to catch up with the ever growing demands of the IT industry.

This year, Sainsburys announced plans to create a ‘Technology Hub’ that would create 300 tech jobs in coding and development in order to assist shoppers with new and intuitive ways to shop online. This is just another example of major companies going the extra mile to keep up with modern technology.

A Company Is Born Every Minute

Not only would there be a demand for existing companies to be on the lookout for candidates to fulfil these types of technical roles but new companies are being founded nearly every minute in the UK and a likely focus will be to build online presence. Last year there were 581,000 new companies founded according to a report from Startup Britain with entrepreneur Luke Johnson stating that “Starting a business is easier, quicker and cheaper than ever thanks to new technology.” With each new company comes new job roles and opportunities – especially IT jobs.

How The IT Job Market Evolves Each Year

A few years ago, one person may have been responsible for social media related activities. Today there are entire departments and roles focusing on improving the user experience and generating content for Facebook, Twitter and other popular social platforms. A few years before that you could say the same thing about mobile app development what with the introduction of the iPhone and other Android smart phones. As technology improves, so does the potential for brand new types of roles and requirements. With Apple having released the Apple Watch and virtual reality headsets such as Oculus Rift becoming more and more popular we could see a whole new market of IT jobs evolve to support these devices.

Can We Expect An Increase Of IT Jobs In 2016?

What with the usage and growth of technology and the other factors mentioned above, we should see either an increase of IT roles or essentially a similarity of where we’re at right now. The fact that technology can only get better and that companies need dedicated IT roles to thrive we are unlikely to see any kind of decrease. With the advent of crowdfunding helping individuals kickstart their own businesses to existing companies adamant on keeping up with modern technology there will always be a demand for IT roles and the same can only be said for 2016 and beyond.

If you want to work in IT, Technojobs has over 18,000 IT jobs to choose from so start searching for an insight into the type of jobs that might appeal to you.