US Cybersecurity Worker Shortage Worsening

The demand for cybersecurity workers across the United State continues to grow, cybersecurity career and workforce resource provider CyberSeek reported Wednesday.

Nationally, there were 301,873 cybersecurity job openings in the private and public sectors during the 12-month period between April 2017 and March 2018. This included 13,610 openings in the public sector.

The total employed U.S. cybersecurity workforce in the relevant 12 months is 768,096.

The new data from CyberSeek – a joint development of CompTIA, the leading technology industry association, and Burning Glass Technologies, a leading labor market analytics firm – comes on the heels of a new government report that calls for immediate and sustained improvements in the country’s cybersecurity workforce.

According to the report, “employers increasingly are concerned about the relevance of cybersecurity-related education programs meeting the needs of their organizations.” The report was produced by the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security as part of the 2017 Executive Order on Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure.

“The cybersecurity talent shortage is widespread, impacting all 50 states” said Matthew Sigelman, chief executive officer at Burning Glass Technologies. “In every state, the employed cybersecurity workforce would have to grow by over 50 percent to align with the market average supply and demand ratio.”

Across all jobs, there were 6.5 employed workers per opening from April 2017 through March 2018. In cybersecurity, there are only 2.5 employed workers per opening.

The metro regions with the largest absolute number of cybersecurity job openings are Washington, D.C. (43,200 openings), New York (19,993) and Chicago (11,464).

Among large metro areas cybersecurity job openings are most heavily concentrated in Washington, D.C. (540% more openings per capita than national average), Baltimore (190%), and San Jose, Calif.(180%).

CyberSeek is aligned with the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework. This connection provides unprecedented visibility into the job roles that are most in demand.

The latest data shows that the largest number of job openings – 194,224 – are in the category of Operate and Maintain. This category includes work roles related to the support, administration and maintenance of IT systems, though not many pure cybersecurity roles. This demonstrates the ubiquity of cybersecurity skills across the technology spectrum.

“We’ve seen dramatic shifts in enterprise technology as organizations adopted a cloud-first mentality, mobile devices became ubiquitous and digital data has grown in relevance,” said Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO, CompTIA. “Yet for all the focus on new and emerging technologies, cybersecurity remains the constant, led by a trained and certified cybersecurity workforce. CyberSeek demonstrates that the cybersecurity field is rich with opportunities for current and prospective technology professionals.”