Median age in the ICT industry: Perhaps I have the wrong industry

As I look further into the IBSA 2012 Environment Scan of the ICT industry, I am thinking perhaps I might have the incorrect industry.  The report shows the median age for all job types is over the 39 years of all Australian industries. Surely this cannot be right. How can I be on the low side of median for my industry?

The 2010 report below provides a different story, but has me questioning which industry segment we report in.

Yesterday’s post about the gender split in the industry noted two “Multimedia specialists and web developers” and “Graphic and web designers, and illustrators”, leading me to think I had the right segment. And yet the Australian Bureau of Statistics focuses ICT on manufacturing and wholesaling.  What my studio does for a living may fall into “Computer consultancy services”, but that could be interpreted many ways.

The 2009 Creative Industries Economic Analysis by the Federal program Enterprise Connect attempts to resolve this by including “software development and interactive content” as a segment in the creative industries alongside film, advertising, and publishing, and architecture. The Enterprise Connect report references another IBSA report on on the Cultural and Creative industry which does not include software development.  So which is it: is software development in the ICT industry per IBSA or the creative industry per Enterprise Connect?

I have been observing this conflict for the past decade. My studio is a “digital agency” as well as an “ebusiness solutions provider”.  There is a segment in the industry that provides creative digital services for high-value online transaction that are critical for business success. We sit in an evolving cross-section that census reports struggle to keep up with.

When I started in the industry over a decade ago as a 27 year old project manager, I was 2 to 5 years older than most of my team. At 40, I am still older than most in the studio, but not by much. The influx of young guns building iPhone applications out of high school are now mixing with their older counterparts who built their first website using FrontPage and DreamWeaver.

My industry is moving rapidly, resulting in a blurry snapshot of the median age for what we do.  Perhaps I will just use whichever numbers don’t make me feel as old.