[cmdkeen]

Different countries have different problems which the article barely touches though the graph hints at.

The UK has a skills shortage, it's vacancy to applicants ratio is back to pre-recession levels despite huge levels of immigration from the EU. London is the 6th largest French city in terms of population, tens of thousands of millennials from Southern and Eastern Europe have migrated to the UK. This is brilliant because they are often well educated (by someone else) and motivated - we have several recently arrived European devs in our office.

However at the same time it takes people longer to get into jobs. Since the 90s the concept of a degree being a pre-requisite for professional jobs has been pushed and pushed. I remember at my grammar school it being assumed you were going to university. Combine this with the rise of the "gap year" and people are emerging into the job market years later than they used to, with different expectations about the kind of work they will do. The article (it is the Guardian after all) highlighted a charity sector employee - not a sector you traditionally associate with pay rises keeping up with the commercial sector. I know far too many acquaintances who emerged from university unwilling to work for a profit making enterprise.

Many European countries, especially in the south, have completely different issues - huge problems with youth unemployment which is driving emigration. A labour market which has two tiers of employees due to the difficulty of laying off permanent employees causing young people to disproportionately end up on casual contracts.

Someone much better placed will no doubt be able to explain the issues in the US and Canada, indeed I'd be unsurprised if there weren't different issues within the US.

[stuaxo]

Hm, not fully convinced about the skills shortage in the UK ?

There is a shortage of jobs, which things like workfare don't help with (if there is a job, just employ these people).

[cmdkeen]

The FT tweeted this chart recently - https://twitter.com/ftdata/status/705059490765348864

It's clearly for the job market overall, there will be variation within sectors. Given over 2 million private sector jobs have been created over the past few years while the public sector has shed jobs I doubt workfare is involved.

[crdoconnor]

There's always a 'skills shortage' for employers who see an opportunity to undercut their current workforce somehow.

[Pxtl]

Exactly. I'll believe in a "skills shortage" when competition for employees drives wages up.

[tomp]

I don't believe there's a skill shortage in the UK. Maybe for industries like banking and programming, but in general, it's really hard for a skilled (STEM, except programmer) graduates to get jobs paying more than 30k (in London).

[TheOtherHobbes]

Not even programming. CS has one of the worst employment rates of all degrees.

Admittedly a lot of arts grads don't get jobs as artists, where most CS grads are only really interested in a programming job.

But even so - the skills shortage is somewhat mythical.

As you say - the remuneration shortage is more obvious than the skill shortage.

Housing costs in London are in the same ballpark as SF, but £40k is considered a generous salary for permanent developers. £60k might be possible for seniors.

It isn't unusual to find web dev jobs offering <£20k.

Work in the City offers much better pay, but the culture can be pretty horrific for anyone who isn't suited to it.

[tostitos1979]

CS is a crazy field. We pay insane salaries to people in their 20s (150K in the Bay area sees normal) but people in their 40s have a hard time finding any paid work. I'm trying to understand why this happens have a hypothesis:

Tech is a winner-take-all industry. You get nothing for being second place. This requires long-working hours (it needed to ship yesterday!) and people you can exploit (younger folks who don't know any better). Moreover, the ever changing nature of languages and tools makes it that on the surface, a young person in their mid to late 20s seems as much experience as an older person. When you combine this, you get shitty software that has shipped fast.

Can we do anything about it? Unionizing software or having some kind of guild membership is not going to happen in my lifetime. (we're all too libertarian). We can slow down the churn of tools (this is also hard and requires discipline ... if we all understood the damage caused by the new new thing, maybe we can do it but I doubt it - can you make a promise to NOT learn any new languages this year? I don't know if I can). We can do our own startups (this requires access to funds that not everyone has, and perhaps a particular lifestyle situation; also ... odds of me getting into something like YC are near 0 I feel). Or, we can change fields. As someone who loves tech and not much else, I have severe doubts I'll be able to find something I have as much passion for as tech. But hey ... who knows. Life is a new adventure everyday :)