What is the Outlook: According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the forecasted growth is 70,400 new job openings each year of this decade i.e. from 2020 – 2030. This is all reflected in higher paying jobs. Read on to find out how and why this market has become such a force.
The Market
Although we talk about the computer support market, the technicians in this field work on troubleshooting and maintaining not only computer but devices as well. The growth in the tablet and especially smartphone markets add to the already strong growth in the PC market.
According to research by Canalys PC Analysis, the global PC market for the leading PC brands, grew by 14% in 2021, see table below.
There are some disparities from brand to brand, but Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple and Acer all held on to their top-five positions in shipments. However, Apple and Acer were the unicorns of the lot after growing deliveries over 20 percent compared to 2020. Lenovo and HP being the top dogs didn’t have as much room to grow and so had the slowest growth of the leaders in 2021. This growth trend is looking like it will continue unabated in 2022. According to principal Analyst Rushabh Doshi 2022 should be a year of “digital acceleration” as people seek to upgrade their systems toward more high-end PCs to make remote work smoother and more efficient.
According to Market Data Forecast, the global smartphone market was US$378.29 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach US$493.13 billion by 2026. This represents an annual growth rate of 6.85% during the 2021 to 2026 forecast period. Market research firm Counterpart Research has compiled the total sales of smartphones for 2021 and an astounding 1.39 billion units (that’s 1,390 million phones) were shipped. If this was one phone – on person, that would represent one fifth of the entire planet getting new smartphones in just one year!
These are some of the underlying factors explaining the growth of the support profession for PCs and devices.
The Job Market
This explains why the US job market for PC and device professionals have been and is projected to continue growing. A predicable result of this growth is that the pay for these professionals remains high. The median annual compensation in the US of a PC support professional is US$100,660 as shown by the Certification Magazine Annual Salary Survey released in January, 2022.
Whether you are currently in the profession or are planning to launch a new career in this field, credentials will matter. As an alternative to college, the right professional certification can be very helpful in obtaining your first job in this field. The Computing Technology Industry Association – CompTIA offers the absolutely dominating certification for any new entrant into this profession. In fact, the vendor-neutral A+ certification has launched many a successful career in the IT field. It is the only PC Support certification track to certify over a million individuals. This credential is probably the best-established one and is endorsed by a multitude of big tech corporations.
To learn more about this certification track we recommend you do an online search. Of particular interest may free examples of CompTIA A+ practice test questions but also A+ exam simulators all of which can help you succeed at that exam.