Assessment and demand forecasting for IT specialists in Russia

Abstract

The digital transformation strategy implemented in Russia involves provision of all industries with IT specialists. The challenge of the study is benchmarking existing methodologies to quantify the demand for IT professionals. The purpose of the study is to develop and test indices to assess the demand for IT specialists and build predictive models. The research methods include aggregating data from government and corporate sources from 2015 to 2024, applying ETL processes to data processing, and building regression models. The Employment Index of IT graduates (hereinafter –ITV) and the Market Demand Index for graduates in IT areas of training (hereinafter –IRS) are proposed as key indica-tors. The Random Forest and Ridge regression models demonstrated high predictive ability (R²>0,82) for ITV and IRS. The hierarchy of socio-economic factors was identified that significantly affect ITV and IRS: for ITV – an increase in GDP (49%), the migration processes (37%), the state educational policy (14%); for IRS – migration (13%), the budget places in universities (12%), the demographic factor – the number of school graduates (10%). It was established that the maximum discrepancy in the values of the indices is observed in 2022, and then the situation stabilizes. The forecast for 2025 indicates the movement of the labor market in the category of IT specialists to a sustainable state, where graduation and employment of graduates is close to the number of vacancies in the labor market. The proposed methodology creates prerequisites for transition to management based on the data in planning the processes of staffing the Russian economy with IT specialists.