Outlook for Coding Jobs

There are anticipated to be 1 million unfilled coding jobs in the U.S. by 2021, reported a Huffington Post article by Zach Sims in January 2015, the CEO and Co-Founder of Codeacademy, a website that provides online IT training. While coding jobs themselves are expected to be plentiful, there are also expected to be many other openings in IT that require coding as a prerequisite skill, states the Occupational Outlook Handbook website, with data provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Here is information on three of them.

Software Developers

Software developers are the creative people who design computer programs, and their median salary in 2012 was $93,350. The employment prospect for this position looks good with the job expected to grow 22 percent through 2022, which is much faster for than average for all jobs. The high demand for computer software is driving this growth.

Web Developers

The role of web developers is to improve the functionality and overall appearance of websites. The median salary for this job was $62,500 annually in 2012, and demand for people to fill web developer jobs was expected to jump 20 percent through 2022. Demand for web developers is on the rise as ecommerce and mobile device web searching increase.

Computer Programmers

Computer programmers create software for computer software code. Software developers and engineers think up the designs that programmers transform into the code computers utilize to implement a program’s commands. This position is expected to increase about 8 percent through 2022, which is about as fast as the demand for all positions. More of these positions are being transitioned back to the United States after being outsourced to other countries. The median salary for this job is $74,280, as of 2012.

Network and Computer Systems Administrators

Network and computer systems administrators are in charge of the day-today running of computer networks in a variety of environments. Administrators earn a median salary of $72,560, as of 2012. Demand for this position is expected to increase by 12 percent through 2022, which is about as fast as the growth rate of other jobs. Cloud computing will probably cause a rise in the amount of work for network administrators.