ICT jobs are among the critical and scarce skills that South Africa needs to fulfil its development objectives.
The 2018 National List of Occupations in High Demand highlights the jobs showing strong employment growth or those experiencing, or about to experience, labour market shortages.
While 335 jobs are deemed to be high demand, a raft of ICT skills are among the approximately 100 ranked as being in highest demand.
These are chief information officer (CIO), ICT project manager, data management manager, application development manager, information systems manager, IT manager, computer quality assurance specialist and ICT communications assistant.
Higher- and high-demand occupations in the ICT sphere include ICT systems analyst, software developer, ICT risk specialist, programmer analyst, developer programmer, applications programmer, data quality officer, decision support analyst, computer network technician, geographic information system specialists and technicians, multimedia designer and web designer, web developer, database designer and administrator, computer network and systems engineer, network analyst and ICT security specialist.
The list is produced to help schools, universities and technikons gear their curricula to meeting the country’s broad developmental objectives.
The list is reviewed every two years, with the latest gazetted on 22 June 2018.
Occupations are deemed to be in high demand, and included on the list, if:
* They have shown relatively strong employment of wage growth over the last five years;
* Are expected to share relatively strong employment growth in the future;
* Have been identified as being in shortage in the labour market; and
* Are new and expected to emerge in the near future was a result of technological advancement, the development of new industries or the implementation of government strategic priorities.