Tomorrow, President Obama will deliver his fifth State of the Union speech, an opportunity to set forth a theme that will guide his administration’s agenda for the year. It is widely anticipated that the president will speak to the topic of economic opportunity and how to close a gap between those at the bottom of the economic ladder and those at the top.
The IT sector has always had a role in this important discussion. The industry is a driver of the economy, with a steady stream of innovation delivering an ever more incredible array of products and services to users and businesses of all types. It is a $3.64 trillion global industry, with the U.S. market accounting for 27 percent or slightly under $1 trillion.
As we launch a discussion of income equality, we should keep an eye on the engines of our economy that create opportunity for so many Americans. IT is not just limited to a single sector. Technical workers are employed across every industry sector – from a CIO at a hospital to a help-desk specialist at a hotel. In total, there were 4.74 million core IT workers employed in the U.S. last year.
Any discussion about how to address income equality and opportunity must consider the technological world we live in and align our national policies and priorities to support our IT workers and the jobs of the future. To that end, we should focus on talent, unleashing our small businesses, and building a technological infrastructure that will lead to growth and possibility.
The U.S. Knowledge Worker
First, we need to foster talent. We know that STEM jobs are growing faster than non-STEM jobs, particularly in IT occupations and there are simply not enough U.S. graduates to fill these slots. In 2013, there were 300,000 to 600,000 open IT and IT-related jobs in the U.S. Focusing on STEM education here at home and passing sensible high-skilled immigration reform to retain the best and brightest here in the U.S. must be a priority this year.
Yet, this is just a smaller piece of a bigger puzzle. Not only do we need highly skilled STEM workers to advance innovation, but we also need career-ready knowledge workers – people who are comfortable with using technology to advance their work in a particular sector. We need to support young people getting into IT careers and prepare them to be knowledge workers for whatever industry they decide to pursue. Training and credentialing young people with industry-recognized workforce certifications is a powerful tool to achieve this end.
Policies that allow for our education system to not only integrate career credentials early in students’ academic careers, but to also provide post-secondary credit for achievement has to be on the table. In addition, we need to support innovative programs like the Creating IT Futures Foundation’s IT-Ready Program to get more mature workers retrained and working. We also need internships and apprenticeships so that more people can benefit from actual work experience.
Support for the Tech SMB
Beyond our workforce, however, we need our tax, regulatory and legal systems to allow small- to medium-sized IT companies to grow and flourish. These companies plays an important role within the U.S. IT market. Small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) within the tech sector employ more than two million workers while spending $110 billion annually on payroll. Generally, these are high-skill, high-paying jobs. Moreover, IT SMBs typically serve other small businesses in their local market, ensuring they have access to cutting-edge technology and technical support.
We can better position IT SMBs to grow and create opportunity by limiting costly and burdensome risks, such as a patchwork of state data breach and notification laws, the growing industry of patent trolls that are using unfair litigation to target tech companies and an outdated tax code. In just a couple of weeks, more than 100 tech executives and CEOs of state tech councils will come to Washington, D.C., to ask members of Congress to act on all of these – but in particular, to rein in patent litigation abuse. The attendees at our TechVoice Fly-In want Congress to enact patent litigation reform that mandates increased information in demand letters in order to reduce abuse and that gets end-users out of the litigation crossfire.
The Opportunities of the Not-Too-Distant Future
Lastly, let’s keep our eye on the future. The Internet of Things refers to a time in which devices – from security systems to thermostats to toothbrushes – will communicate with one another over unlicensed spectrum without human intervention. An Internet-of-Things world means that there will be a lot more traffic on unlicensed networks than ever before and there needs to be adequate spectrum available to support this uptick in traffic.
IT SMBs not only create these new devices, but also run businesses that repair these devices or use these devices to offer innovative new services. Without access to unlicensed spectrum, none of these businesses will exist. It is essential for lawmakers to understand just how important unlicensed spectrum is to the future of IT SMBs and the broader IT channel.
IT SMBs throughout the U.S. are well-positioned to create opportunity and advance economic equality. Remaining globally competitive and maintaining an environment that welcomes innovation will help spur further growth and, therefore, more opportunity. We are hopeful that our policymakers will support a policy infrastructure to not only create a stronger IT industry, but provide a clear pathway for generations to come to enter to the industry and help lead America’s economic future.
We welcome the president’s conversation on economic opportunity. We have a lot to say!
