Today, I'll be at New America talking about the impact software has on the economy. Software is at the forefront of American innovation -- laying the groundwork for advances that promise to make businesses more efficient, jobs more plentiful, opportunities more pervasive, and the economy even more prosperous.
BSA | The Software Alliance has released "The $1 Trillion Economic Impact of Software," a first-of-its-kind study conducted by researchers at The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to quantify software's impact on the US economy.
- Software supports nearly 10 million jobs nationwide.
- Software drives economic gains in all 50 states.
- The average annual wage for a software developer is $108,760. That salary, along with big career prospects and satisfying work is why Glassdoor named "data scientist" as the best job for 2016 and CNN named "software architect" as the number one job for 2015.
Our industry has more jobs than we can fill. The Department of Labor projects that by 2020, US universities will only be able to fill less than one-third of 1.4 million computer specialist job openings. We need to encourage more young people to pursue science careers, including computer science.
I will be discussing the study's findings, as well as the need to expand the pipeline of software talent, at a New America event today called "Software's Economic Impact + The Drive for Talent." I will be joined by Ryan Burke, Senior Policy Advisor, National Economic Council, The White House; Mark Doms, PhD, Former Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, Department of Commerce; Lisa Guernsey, Director of New America's Learning Technologies Project; Melissa Moritz, Deputy Director of STEM, Department of Education; and Cameron Wilson, COO and VP, Government Relations, Code.org.
The full study, along with detailed summaries of the findings, is available at www.bsa.org/softwareimpact.