ITWF Progress Report 2:
Quantitative Overview of US IT Workers – CPS Data

1 October 2002
This revision: 25 February 2003

Data from the CPS are used to characterize the most important categories of IT occupations:

• Occ 64:   Computer Systems Analysts & Scientists
• Occ 65:   Operations and Systems Researchers and Analysts
• Occ 229: Computer Programmers
• Occ 308: Computer Operators

Total IT employment in the March 2001 CPS data is 2.98 million according to the occupational definitions used here. The following table presents estimates of the IT workforce from a variety of different sources.

The employment breakdown by occupation is as follows:

I have also examined trends in employment and earnings over the 1990-2001 period, which can be summarized in the following tables/graphs:

Clearly, there has been a strong upward trend in employment of computer systems analysts and scientists while employment levels in all other IT occupations has remained relatively stable over the 1990-2001 period. Cumulatively, 1.14 million jobs have been added to the Computer Systems Analysts and Scientists occupation (Occ 64) over the 1990-2001 period. This has more than offset the declining employment levels in Computer Operators (Occ 308) and the relatively unchanged employment among Programmers (Occ 229) and Operations/Systems Researchers and Analysts (Occ 65).

The strong upward trend in employment levels for Computer Systems Analysts and Scientists was interrupted only twice: once in 1994-1995 and again in 1998-1999. It is interesting that a decline in employment levels in all IT occupations except for Computer Systems Analysts and Scientists preceded the flattening of that occupation in 1998. In fact, aggregate IT employment saw a substantial drop in its growth rate in ….

I have also analyzed annual wage and salary earnings reported in the March CPS.

The earnings gap between IT and non-IT workers has grown over time but it is more instructive to look at earnings by specific IT occupation. The following graph shows inflation-adjusted (using the PCE index, 1996=100) annual wage and salary earnings by occupation with in the IT industry.

Real wages among IT occupations have been relatively flat over the 1990-2001 period but jumped among systems analysts/scientists in 2001.

There is a sharp rise in relative pay of IT jobs in the first half of the 1990s, then a sharp drop in 1996-1998 before recovering to very high levels. The first half of the decade saw relatively little growth in employment, employment begins to pick up as wages fall at mid-decade and then continues to grow as wages rise quite rapidly at the end of the decade. On the face of it there is an interesting story to be told here, and one that I don't think has been told yet. We'll need to look further.

About the authors

Brandon Dupont is a Graduate Student, University of Kansas Department of Economics.