Number of IT professionals in workforce soars

There are now 4.6 million employees in the information technology field compared to only 450,000 in 1970, according to the Occupations in Information Technology report from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

This increase in IT professionals now means 2.9 percent of the workforce is comprised of IT workers.

The report also found IT workers are more likely to be men, and on average, men earn more than their female colleagues. The proportion of women in the IT field has decreased from 31 percent in 1990 to 25 percent in 2014, according to a release from the Census Bureau.

The highest-earning IT jobs are computer information research scientists, software developers, applications and system software, computer and information systems managers and computer network architects. Employees in these jobs have more advanced degrees than those in other IT occupations, the report showed.

While 43 percent of all workers are between the ages of 25 and 44, 55 percent of IT professionals fall within this age range, suggesting that IT workers tend to be younger compared to the rest of the workforce.

The report derived statistics from surveys of randomly selected households and aimed to explore the trends and features of IT workers, as well as to examine the growth of the IT workforce.