Here in January 2026, skills inflation is high, with global tech job postings way below pre-pandemic levels, and data showing a 36% drop in U.S. tech job listings since early 2020.
This is despite developer population growth and more people pursuing technical education.
That fact pulls the rug from the old maxim “learn to code and you’re safe.” This forces us to wonder, if the world is awash with coding, product, and data skills, what actually separates success from mediocrity?
Going beyond a surface argument, this is about labour markets, pointers, wage structures, and the dynamic reality of work.
Skills Inflation: From Scarcity to Saturation
A decade ago, coding and data fluency were rare. Universities produced a limited cohort of computer scientists. Specialists commanded high premiums.
You were distinctive if you could write SQL, understand algorithms, or build a simple web application.
Today, online courses, bootcamps and open resources have made those skills easily accessible to everyone.
Millions worldwide have basic programming or analytics knowledge. Bootcamps alone have graduated hundreds of thousands of tech entrants annually. People everywhere can check “coding” on their Curriculum Vitae (CV).
We have more skilled individuals than there are traditional roles for them. It changes the labour market dynamic.
Scarcity rents, the wage and status advantage you get from possessing a rare skill, have declined for general tech skills.
Research projects that over 90% of organisations worldwide will face IT skills shortages by 2026, costing trillions in delayed projects and lost innovation.
How can both be true? The answer can be found in what kinds of skills are abundant and which are still scarce.
Data: Complex, Uneven, Unsettling
- Tech jobs have not returned to peak levels even as millions of graduates flood the market. U.S. postings are down around 36% from pre-pandemic peaks.
- Organisations continue to report significant skills shortages in specialised areas, with some estimating losses close to $5.5 trillion by 2026 due to gaps between demand and capability.
- Wage growth across broad tech roles has slowed, average salary increase in 2025 hovered in the low single digits, but specialised roles still command premiums.
- Entry-level opportunities are shrinking while competition rises, with some reports of junior postings dropping sharply in certain markets.
The demand for basic technical literacy is no longer enough on its own. The world has plenty of people who can code, analyse data, or run product tools; these skills are currently facing high inflation.
But much less room for all of them to make economic progress from those skills alone.
Why Skills by Themselves Are No Longer Enough
- Signalling Erosion
Degrees and certificates used to signal ability effectively. Now, with bootcamp graduates, online micro-credentials and self-taught individuals everywhere, formal qualifications alone are weaker signals.
Employers care more about demonstrable impact, real outputs, portfolio quality, and business results.
- Experience Inflation
Many jobs labelled “entry-level” now require years of hands-on experience. That’s not because employers are elitist. It’s because generic skills abound, and firms use experience to filter candidates more reliably.
- Wage Polarisation
Broad-based tech wage growth has slowed. Specialists, those who combine technology with domain insight, complexity handling and decision-making, still earn above average. Generalists still find jobs, but wage leverage is diminished.
- Automation and Efficiency Pressures
Routine coding and pattern tasks are easier to automate and standardise than strategic thinking and complex problem-solving. That pushes the value curve away from day-to-day execution towards high-order judgement.
Where Scarcity Still Truly Exists
If coding and basic analytics aren’t scarce, what is?
Context and domain expertise
A coder in healthcare tech who understands clinical workflows and regulatory nuance brings far more value than one who merely writes functions.
Problem framing and judgement
Turning data into action requires way more than technical fluency. It requires asking the right questions, spotting biases, and choosing trade-offs.
Cross-disciplinary strength
Engineers who understand business models, designers who grasp system limitations, and product leads who speak both languages command disproportionate leverage.
Human skills that machines and tools struggle to replicate
Creativity, strategic communication, ethical reasoning, and complex negotiation remain hard to automate or standardise.
In labour economics terms, the complement to raw technical skill, the ability to integrate, to contextualise and to impact outcomes, is where scarcity rents are now concentrated.
Labour Market Signals: What’s Really Happening
This change has consequences:
- Qualifications alone are depreciating: What’s important is what you produce, not just what you know.
- Employers hunt for demonstrable history of solving problems. Projects, published work, actual delivery history beat certificates.
- Wage growth is bifurcating: general roles see weak growth; specialists, especially those fusing tech with deep domain knowledge, see strong premiums.
This reveals how labour markets always reward scarcity. But what’s scarce now isn’t general know-how but decision-ready expertise.
What This Means for Workers and Organisations
For professionals:
Skills are essential. But the game has changed.
You must couple skills with impact, judgement, and context. Build evidence of what you can do, not just what you know. Aim for roles that demand synthesis, not repetition.
For organisations:
Relying on credential checks or generic job descriptions won’t attract the best. You need to rethink talent signals, measure ability differently, and invest in internal learning pathways that cultivate depth, not just surface skills.
For policymakers and educators:
The focus should move from teaching narrow skills to nurturing capability portfolios, combinations of analytical skill, domain mastery, creativity and adaptability.
Scarcity isn’t in Skills but in Meaningful Value Creation
So, the truth is, when everyone learns to code, leading to skills inflation, no one is truly unique because of that alone. Coding and data skills have become a baseline, not an advantage.
What still drives differentiation is:
- How you apply skills to complex situations
- What results you produce
- How you integrate multiple domains of knowledge
That’s where the true leverage lies today, and where opportunities will form.
