When the first commercial computer came on the market in 1951, the writing of software emerged from an activity done in a lab to one done in the offices of government and large corporations, as only they could afford to buy computers. However, much in the same way as the invention of the printing press stimulated widespread adoption of writing as an essential skill, the proliferation of computer technology in the last 55 years has caused the demand for software to skyrocket. Once accessible to a few, computer technology today is all around us and is relatively inexpensive. Now, anyone with a need and the education can write software. It is no longer the exclusive purview of large computer companies.

To properly measure the economic impacts of all the work done in Oregon writing software, one has to define the “software industry” in its entirety. Thus, the analysis considered the following three basic components, which encompass nearly all of the software development done inside the state:

1. Companies whose main products are software or software services constitute the core of the software industry. However, this first component defines the industry too narrowly because it only considers the work done by paid employees of a subset of companies that perform software development. These industry sectors are represented by the two blue shaded ovals in Figure 1.
2. To account for the thousands of independent, taxpaying workers that earn their livings writing software, the analysis also counted the earnings of self-employed Oregonians that work as software developers or writers. This component of the software industry is represented by the green shaded oval in Figure 1. (The oval lies outside of the larger oval representing Oregon’s high-tech sector because self-employed persons are not counted in the state’s official employment statistics.)
3. The third component of the software industry covers software professionals that are employed by companies whose main products are things other than software. Examples include businesses, such as insurance companies and manufacturers, but many non-profits, such as hospitals and universities, and government agencies that employ staff who produce software. This is called the "inter-industry component." This is represented by the yellow shaded ovals in Figure 1. (There are two yellow ovals representing software professionals at high-tech companies other than software publishers and service providers and software professionals outside of the high-tech industry altogether.)

For more information about this industry please contact:
Heather Ficht
Senior Project Manager
Worksystems, Inc.
111 SW Fifth Ave., Suite 1150
Portland, OR 97204
Ph. 503.478.7359
hficht@worksystems.org
fax 503.478.7459