1 Ready to Work Many employers are making high-return investments in their front-line employees’ skills, working with innovators and education, workforce, union, and community partners. Others can and should follow their lead. The Tech Workforce: Creating On-ramps to Fill America’s Highest-Demand Jobs Why do hundreds of thousands of jobs in cybersecurity, network administration, web design, coding, and data analytics go unfilled daily when millions of Americans are un- or underemployed?21 The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that projects that between 2012 and 2022, 1.3 million jobs will need to be filled from new jobs and replacement need for computer occupations and information systems managers, but without serious growth in the number of people with information technology (IT) skills, it is unlikely that American workers will meet that demand22. Businesses, individuals, and communities across the country should seize this opportunity. Workers can boost their earnings on IT employment tracks, with strong potential for upward mobility. Businesses burdened with high IT vacancy and recruiting costs, and the U.S. economy as a whole, can become more competitive. The need to train many more people with IT skills exists nationwide and across a broad range of employers. Recent data on the IT job market shows that Pennsylvania, Illinois, Oklahoma, and 23 Alabama had the highest demand for IT workers relative to the installed IT talent pool. And they aren’t only for those with four-year or advanced degrees; some require IT skills that can be taught in less than a year. 21 CEB TalentNeuron 22 C. Brett Lockard and Michael Wolf, “Occupational employment projections to 2020,” Bureau of Labor Statistics (January 2012). 23 CEB TalentNeuron research and analysis, crawling of public profiles, skill predictor algorithms, CEB TalentNeuron Skill Taxonomy & SME Interviews. CEB, 2013.Unpublished 22