There was a strong demand and salaries have gone up. At the same time, the number of students taking up computer sciences is declining dramatically in some countries. In Germany the number of students has dropped by 30% since 2000. Today there are only 27'000 beginners. Experience from previous years shows that around 50% of students drop out, don't complete their studies, what means that the number of graduates entering the labour market in 4-5 years is probably not enough to replace the number of IT professionals who leave for retirement.
Currently there is not much talk about a skills shortage, yet if economic growth continues as expected and if there is no substantial change on the supply side, industry is heading for a major skills crisis. The low number of women (under 20%) in ICT, the demographic development and industry's reluctance to employ mature IT professionals help to aggravate the supply problems.
