Top 10 in-demand IT skills

It’s the third annual Computer Science Education Week, a national call to action promoting computer science education and computer careers. From December 7 to 13, kids across the country are diving into opportunities to learn IT skills at schools, nonprofits, businesses, and even government agencies.

It’s a terrific opportunity for kids to learn about and expand their computer sills—but gaining those skills isn’t just for kids.

Why learn IT skills?

In just a few years, computer information technology (IT) skills and what’s called computational thinking will be needed in more than half of all jobs, according to Megan Smith, U.S. Chief Technology Officer. Learning or brushing up on an IT skill can have a huge impact on your job prospects.

Which IT skills?

So you know you want to gain some tech skills—but how do you know exactly which skills to brush up on? You can learn in a few ways.  If you currently work in a field that you want to stay in, ask around, and take notice of the emerging tech skills at your work place. Once you identify a skill you want to learn, you can visit CareerOneStop’s Local Training Finder or Certification Finder to research training options.

You can also can ask any employers or employees about skills that are in demand in their industry—whether it’s your current field or one you want to break in to. Or you can search job postings to see which skills employer cite most often.

CareerOneStop staff did their own analysis to see which IT skills are most wanted by employers.  After analyzing thousands of job listings on US.jobs and other websites that feed into CareerOneStop’s Job Finder, our researchers determined that the most common IT skills mentioned in job postings are specific programming languages. They compiled this list of twenty most in-demand programming languages, or skills, wanted by employers:

1. SQL
2. Java
3. Linux
4. .NET
5. HTML
6. JavaScript
7. UNIX
8. Python
9. XML
10. CSS