REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwire - May 6, 2011) - As businesses in technology hotbeds such as Silicon Valley, Austin and Boston can attest, good local talent is hard to find. Despite March unemployment numbers at 8.8 percent, the demand for technology-based workers, particularly by companies in these regions, continues to grow. And while technology-based work -- such as programming, software development and Web design -- has been a staple of online work for nearly a decade, the demand for technical skills is hotter than ever, according to the April Online Employment Report by oDesk, the largest and fastest-growing global employment platform.
As reported by The Next Web1 and TechCrunch in recent months, with large companies such as Facebook and Google absorbing talent in technology hotbeds, small- to medium-sized companies are turning online to tap top talent from around the world.
"We have six full-time engineers working on our core product, but we needed to supplement our technical team for some new marketing initiatives," states Rich Aberman, co-founder of WePay.com, a Palo Alto-based Web site that makes it easy for anyone to collect money online. "We wanted more engineers to experiment with projects and new ideas, but finding affordable technology talent in Silicon Valley has become a huge challenge for startups and small businesses. Here, it can be hard to compete with the big budgets of larger companies. By using oDesk, we can keep our engineering team cutting-edge by leveraging talent -- in the Ukraine, the Philippines and the Midwest -- that we wouldn't otherwise be able to access."
oDesk's Online Employment Report shows that technology skills are experiencing sustained, long-term demand, as well as seeing new interest around expertise in the latest hot technologies. The skills currently in greatest demand have also held steady in overall demand over 2010. These "top skills" are PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript. In addition, the technology skills showing the most rapid growth in demand are those aligned with interactive, social and mobile trends. Specifically, those involving DHTML, Facebook API and Android SDK are up over last year by more than 2,700 percent, 1,300 percent, and 1,500 percent, respectively.
"Startup and enterprise industry leaders are facing a talent shortage compounded by the fact that skilled workers rarely live in the same place as the companies that need them," said Gary Swart, oDesk CEO. "Tapping technical talent online relieves the pressure to find local workers with specific skills, and is driving economic recovery for both businesses and workers around the world."
Across all skill categories, in April more than 79,000 jobs were posted -- which is up 78 percent over last year -- and $16 million was spent in online work. In addition, over 2,000 new contractors joined the online workforce each day.
For more information on the current trends in online work, please visit oDesk's Online Employment Report.
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