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There are a half-million jobs open in cybersecurity, new data shows, and Cyberseek — a joint project between industry and government — has just released a broad toolkit the provides the top jobs, top cities with job openings, and resources for landing them.
Across the country, job-seekers’ odds of landing a job in cybersecurity maybe twice as good as their peers in other industries, the new data shows. While there are nearly four workers per job opening across all US industries, there are less than half that many cybersecurity workers per job, according new information released Wednesday by Cyberseek. Fewer workers per job opening is good news for job-seekers.
US employers advertised nearly 508,000 job openings for cybersecurity workers between June 2019 and May 2020, with hiring hotspots in big cities like Washington, DC, medium-sized cities like Huntsville, Alabama, and smaller ones like Utica, New York — alongside Silicon Valley, where giants like Google and Apple make their headquarters.
The project shows there are currently 922,720 workers employed in cybersecurity-related jobs according to the data gathered from June 2019 to May 2020, but there remains a wide jobs gap, experts say. Cybersecurity companies Palo Alto Networks, Trend Micro, and McAfee list dozens of job openings, and jobs site Indeed lists thousands.
The new data shows the most-needed cybersecurity job roles nationally are:
Cyberseek, founded in 2016, is a joint project of National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with participation from the CompTIA tech industry trade group and job analytics company Burning Glass Technologies.
Job-seekers with both tech and communications skills can use the website to find and map out opportunities, says Will Markow, managing director of human capital management and emerging technologies at Burning Glass Technologies.
“Job-seekers can take stock of their skill sets, see where the opportunities are, and use step-by-step resources to plot a path. That absolutely goes for knowledge workers as well,” Markow said. “Cybersecurity has plenty of jobs that require communicating with a diverse set of stakeholders. There are probably now more soft skills jobs in security than any other area of tech.”
The Cyberseek website provides an interactive career pathway chart listing job requirements and salaries. The site also provides links to free and low-cost online training programs for cybersecurity careers from the Commerce Department.
Here are the top 10 cities for cybersecurity jobs, according to CyberSeek. The cities are ranked by the concentration of cybersecurity job demand for that location relative to the national average. For instance, the top city, Huntsville, Alabama, has 14 times as many cybersecurity job openings as the national average.