Easy answers to the above
- There is no real IT skills shortage, they've been saying that for years but half the current IT workers can't find jobs. The shortage is in skilled people who have the laundry list of skills described in most vacancies, who are willing to work for little over the minimum wage that the majority of employers seem to want to pay
- they'll take advantage of temporarily cheap labour, see point 1
- older workers are employable or capable of retraining, but we're back to point 1 again, although there is also the factor of age prejudice to be included, IT is a young persons career and if you're over 40 then you can't possibly keep up with the pace of new technology.
Sorry if that sounds a touch cynical, I have only been in IT for 15 years so I may not have the experience yet that proves the above wrong. I know most of my training has been self study, I have had occasional employers who see the value in sending you on training, however they are few and far between. I also seen "entry level" positions that after 15 years of network, server admin and desktop experience I couldn't even qualify for, the list of technologies they want experience in is incredible and yet they want to pay entry level wages for it.
