A recent study of the Brazilian Association of Information Technology and Communication (Brasscom) shows what was already known: Brazil lacks skilled workers. The country will need an additional 750,000 IT professionals to keep pace with increasing demand, Brasscom says. The association estimates there are currently about 1.2 million IT professionals, representing a deficit of 92,000 only this year.
However, according to Brasscom, it could be difficult to fill all those positions because many fewer are graduating than the labor market needs. In São Paulo state, for instance, the IT industry hired 14,000 IT professionals, compared with 10,000 recent graduates. The eight states analyzed by the association — São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Distrito Federal, Paraná, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Sul — will need 78,000 professionals in 2014, and only 33,000 students might graduate by that time, Brasscom said.
If the jobs are not filled, Brazil’s ICT market could have difficulty reaching the level of U.S. $300 billion to $400 billion forecast for 2022. The ICT sector is crucial in Brazil’s projected climb to fifth place among the world’s largest economies in 10 years.
It is common to have open positions. For instance, IT integration firm CPM Braxis Capgemini has 150 open positions in São Paulo state. Service and software provider Cast is hiring 66 people in BrasÃlia, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Brazilian IT and BPO company Tivit has 100 jobs to fill for positions such as specialists in Cobol, .Net, and Java, Linux and Unix.
In southern Brazil, software SAP AG (SAP) is hiring 20 interns for its labs. Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is also offering internships.
Despite the lack of professionals in Brazil’s ICT industry, October’s total of formal contract jobs was 126,143, a decrease of 40% from the same month last year and the lowest monthly total since 2008, when new hires exceeded dismissals by 61,000 jobs, according to the General Register of Employed and Unemployed released Nov. 18 by the Ministry of Labor and Employment. In the first 10 months of this year there was a reduction in contract job offers of 18.3% compared with the same period last year.
For the first 10 months of this year to October, the industry’s hiring of workers with formal contracts exceeded layoffs by 2,241,574 jobs. The government’s initial target for 2011 was 3 million new formal jobs nationwide, but the Ministry has since lowered that goal to 2.4 million jobs.
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