Several months ago, I posted some analysis of IT-related jobs listed on Dice and Monster. At the time, the hot job skills were SQL, Java, and XML. Things haven't changed much since April - although some specific skills have moved down or up on the list.In summary, here are some conclusions we can draw from this data:
- In almost all job skills, there are more jobs posted now than there were in April or last year in June.
- The most popular skills are Java, SAP, Oracle, SQL, and C#/C++.
- Job posts mentioning specific programming languages and popular applications have experienced the largest increase in jobs posted over this period.
- The biggest jumps (by percentage, sometimes from a small base) were in job posts mentioning Android, Google, Facebook, iPhone, Salesforce.com, and AJAX.
- The biggest drops (by percentage) were in job posts mentioning Fortran, PowerBuilder, and Informix.
Here are the top 20 skills listed in job titles on Dice.com and Monster.com:
| Rank | Skill | Total Jobs | Previous rank |
| 1 | Java | 6316 | 3 |
| 2 | SAP | 4357 | 13 |
| 3 | Oracle | 3561 | 2 |
| 4 | SQL | 2461 | 1 |
| 5 | C# | 1778 | 10 |
| 6 | C++ | 1319 | 12 |
| 7 | Unix | 1189 | 5 |
| 8 | Linux | 1092 | 6 |
| 9 | Peoplesoft | 955 | - |
| 10 | Windows | 947 | 4 |
| 11 | SQL Server | 817 | 8 |
| 12 | PHP | 657 | 19 |
| 13 | Embedded | 489 | - |
| 14 | Siebel | 405 | - |
| 15 | PL/SQL | 367 | 17 |
| 16 | JavaScript | 337 | - |
| 17 | Mainframe | 306 | - |
| 18 | Perl | 265 | 14 |
| 19 | Salesforce.com | 253 | - |
| 20 | Ruby | 240 | - |
Some additional findings:
- Language skills showed the largest increase in demand as a category, up 78%. Applicatoins grew 45%, platforms grew 36%, and databases grew 33%.
- Database: Given the large base, there was a surprisingly large jump in posts for Oracle jobs (up 34%). SQL Server and MySQL also had large jumps, but from substantially lower bases. If you're going to invest in learning a database, at this point, Oracle is the clear leading choice.
- Applications: Salesforce.com had the largest jump by percentage (up 113%), but from a relatively small base (118). SAP (and related skills of ABAP and BASIS) had a large jump from a large base (up 50%). Siebel also had a big jump in mentions (up 36%).
- Languages: There was a huge increase in job posts for Java skills (up 92% from a large base). Other languages that showed large increases from large bases include C# (up 47%), PHP (up 57%), and C++ (up 28%).
- Platforms: Only in the platforms category was there a lot of change other than just growth. Unix was still the largest platform skill by mention, but Linux passed Windows with 34% growth. There was substantial growth in mentions for Google, Android, iPhone, and AJAX. There was healthy growth for most platforms, with the notable exception of Blackberry-related jobs.
- Skills that are not in high demand or growing: Informix, Sybase, PowerBuilder, Fortran, Blackberry, Palm WebOS, Yahoo, Widgets/Gadgets.
- Skills that are surprisingly low in demand: HTML5, Azure, Facebook.
- Overall, there was an increase of 50% in job posts on these two sites.
