Time Machine

Computer user support specialists

Name: Computer User Support Specialists: employment and wages since 1990
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

Also called Help desk specialist, IT support specialist, Technical support specialist, Desktop support specialist, End user support specialist

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 717,190 US computer user support specialists, with median pay of $61,860 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 125,000 from 1990, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for computer user support specialists: Cloud ITSM platforms + mobile + ChatOps, 2010 to 2020. Cloud ITSM and ChatOps made support faster but expanded scope: every mobile device, every cloud application, and every remote worker added tickets.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to decline 3.5% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

66.7% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend.

Last updated 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Computer user support specialists: jobs and pay since 1990 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-1232

Chicago

Future History. "Computer user support specialists: jobs and pay since 1990." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-1232.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_15_1232, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Computer user support specialists: jobs and pay since 1990}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/15-1232}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time

2000now

Country

2026

Known then as PC Support Technician / Microcomputer Specialist (IBM PC proliferation era)

Known then as Help Desk Technician / Help Desk Analyst (ITIL formalization era)

Known then as Computer Support Specialist / Technical Support Specialist (internet expansion era)

Known then as Computer User Support Specialist (2000 SOC split from network support)

Known then as Computer User Support Specialists (BLS SOC 15-1232, current)

Known today as Computer User Support Specialists (BLS SOC 15-1232, current)

Projected to still be called Computer User Support Specialists (BLS SOC 15-1232, current)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

717K

Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$61,860

≈ $60,274 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1981

August 12, 1981: IBM releases the IBM Personal Computer (Model 5150) at a New York press conference. Priced at $1,565 for a base unit, the IBM PC becomes the first personal computer to achieve mass corporate adoption. Within months, companies are ordering PCs in bulk -- and discovering that their employees need help using them. IBM coins the phrase "help desk" during this period to describe the telephone-based support structure it builds for its enterprise customers. The PC does not just change what work is done; it creates an entirely new occupation to support those who do it.

Beat · 1989

The British government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) re-names and publishes ITIL -- the IT Infrastructure Library -- as a 40-volume set of best practices for government IT service management. The framework introduces standardized vocabulary: incident, problem, change, service request, knowledge management. ITIL quickly spreads beyond government into private-sector IT organizations. By formalizing the help-desk function as a named discipline with documented processes, ITIL transforms what had been an ad-hoc internal support arrangement into a recognized professional practice with reproducible procedures.

Beat · 1991

Remedy Corporation, founded in November 1990 by Lawrence Garlick and David Mahler in Mountain View, California, ships the first version of its Action Request System -- the first purpose-built help-desk ticketing software. The ARS automatically generates a trouble ticket from a user's problem description and routes it to the appropriate technician; technicians work from a shared database of known problems and solutions. Remedy prices the server software at $6,500 for a three-client license. The ARS becomes the template for all subsequent ITSM platforms and introduces the fundamental workflow -- submit, triage, route, resolve, close -- that defines the occupation to this day.

Beat · 1993

CompTIA -- the Computing Technology Industry Association, formerly ABCD -- launches the A+ certification in 1993: the first vendor-neutral credential for end-user computing support. The original exam covers Windows 3.1, MS-DOS, 486 CPUs, and 14.4 kbps modems. Unlike Novell CNE or Microsoft MCSE (which certify server administration), the A+ specifically validates the work of the PC support technician. CompTIA refreshes the credential every three years. By the 20th anniversary in 2013, approximately 900,000 IT professionals have earned the A+.

Beat · 2000

The 2000 Standard Occupational Classification formally splits "computer support specialists" into two distinct codes: user support (working toward 15-1232) and network support (working toward 15-1231). Before 2000, BLS tracked both under a single catch-all code. The split reflects the occupational reality that had emerged through the 1990s: the person answering calls about Word crashes was doing fundamentally different work from the person managing network switches, and neither career path was well-described by a shared category. The 2000 split enables the first clean employment time series for user support specifically.

Beat · 2019

ITIL 4 is released, incorporating Agile, Lean, and DevOps thinking into the service-management framework for the first time. The update reframes the IT support specialist's role around value co-creation rather than process compliance -- emphasizing speed, feedback loops, and continuous improvement over adherence to rigid procedure chains. ITIL 4 also introduces the Service Value System, which positions the help desk not as a cost center but as a value stream. The release coincides with widespread adoption of ChatOps (Slack/Teams-based ticketing) and represents the last major framework revision before AI-powered service desks began automating the processes ITIL had spent three decades formalizing.

Beat · 2026

February 2026: ServiceNow launches its Autonomous Workforce, including the L1 Service Desk AI Specialist, which resolves 90%+ of targeted L1 ticket volume at ServiceNow itself -- 99% faster than human agents. The same month, ServiceNow acquires Moveworks, whose enterprise AI had already achieved 88% autonomous resolution at Broadcom. The announcements are the clearest signal yet that the agentic AI era has arrived for the user support role: the systems are not handling edge cases, they are handling the majority of tickets. Human support specialists are simultaneously repositioning toward complex troubleshooting, AI system administration, and major-incident coordination -- tasks that the AI platforms explicitly retain human oversight for.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1981

On August 12, 1981, IBM released the IBM Personal Computer -- the 5150 -- at a press event in New York City, priced at $1,565 for a base configuration. It was not the first personal computer, but it was the first to trigger mass corporate adoption. Within months, banks, law firms, insurance companies, and government agencies were ordering IBM PCs by the thousands. The problem nobody had fully anticipated: the people who bought them did not know how to use them. The PC was harder to operate than a typewriter, less forgiving than a mainframe (which kept trained operators physically separated from business users), and it broke in entirely new ways -- hardware failures, software conflicts, configuration errors, and a new and bewildering problem called "user error." IBM coined the term "help desk" in the 1980s as companies began formalizing a function that had previously been an informal arrangement: someone in the office who knew computers more than everyone else. That person became the PC Support Technician, the Microcomputer Specialist, the Help Desk Analyst. By 1989, the British government had published the first edition of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), standardizing help-desk processes and inventing much of the vocabulary -- incident, ticket, escalation, service level -- that still defines the role today. A decade after the IBM PC launched, this informal craft had become a recognized profession, with its own vocabulary, certification (CompTIA introduced the A+ credential in 1993, the first vendor-neutral benchmark for end-user support competency), and increasingly its own dedicated software platforms, starting with Remedy Corporation's Action Request System in 1991.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace computer user support specialists? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

→ 2035

-3.5%

BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 15-1232 (Computer user support specialists): 750.6 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 724.4 thousand in 2035, a change of -26.2 thousand (-3.5%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (2.5% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.

Official statisticReport an error

How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)

Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.

Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"

2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)

66.7%

of tasks

What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 15-1232.00 Computer User Support Specialists. Shown: human-rated β = 0.667, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.481 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.852; GPT-4-rated β 0.611. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for computer user support specialists

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereTriage and prioritize incoming support tickets in the ITSM platform (ServiceNow, Freshservice, or Jira Service Management)

Triage and prioritize incoming support tickets in the ITSM platform (ServiceNow, Freshservice, or Jira Service Management); configure and tune AI routing rules and deflection workflows; handle escalated tickets that AI could not resolve autonomously and document resolution patterns to improve future AI handling.^[3],[5],[4]

Tools picking this up

ServiceNow Autonomous Workforce (L1 Service Desk AI Specialist) ↗Freshservice Freddy AI ↗

Where your edge is

Shift focus from closing tickets to improving the AI system that closes tickets. Learn to write and tune classification rules, knowledge-base articles, and escalation thresholds in your ITSM platform. Specialists who own the AI workflow earn more and are harder to replace than those who compete with it.

AI is sitting alongside you hereConfigure endpoint management policies in Microsoft Intune or Jamf to enable zero-touch device enrollment

Configure endpoint management policies in Microsoft Intune or Jamf to enable zero-touch device enrollment; handle enrollment failures and compliance-exception cases that require manual intervention; maintain device compliance baselines and patch deployment schedules.^[1],[12]

Tools picking this up

Microsoft Intune ↗

Where your edge is

Earn the Microsoft Intune or Jamf Certified Associate credential. Organizations that have deployed modern endpoint management still need humans to handle non-compliant devices, legacy hardware, and policy exceptions -- the job becomes one of policy architecture and exception resolution rather than hands-on configuration.

AI is sitting alongside you hereMonitor ITSM analytics dashboards for emerging ticket patterns, service degradation signals, and repeat-failure indicators

Monitor ITSM analytics dashboards for emerging ticket patterns, service degradation signals, and repeat-failure indicators; initiate problem-management investigations when pattern data suggests a systemic root cause; and coordinate proactive user communications before an issue triggers a ticket flood.^[5],[1]

Tools picking this up

Freshservice Freddy AI ↗ServiceNow Autonomous Workforce (L1 Service Desk AI Specialist) ↗

Where your edge is

Move from reactive ticket resolution to proactive problem management. Specialists who use analytics to detect issues before users report them prevent large ticket floods and demonstrate strategic value -- the difference between a cost center and an operational asset in IT.

Where computer user support specialists go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

Information Security Analysts
US median pay
$129,180 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+21%
Network and Computer Systems Administrators
US median pay
$99,130 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
-4.1%

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Information Security Analysts

IT support specialists already understand operating systems, user account management, network topology, and anomalous behavior patterns -- the exact foundation that cybersecurity roles require. The global cybersecurity talent shortage exceeded millions of unfilled positions in 2025; U.S. demand alone had hundreds of thousands of open roles. Support specialists who recognize and escalate potential security incidents in their daily work are already doing entry-level SOC analyst work. The bridge is primarily certification (CompTIA Security+, CySA+) plus deliberate exposure to SIEM tools and incident response procedures, not a degree.

What you'd add

· CompTIA Security+ certification (formalize existing system and network knowledge)
· SIEM fundamentals: alert triage and log analysis in Splunk or Microsoft Sentinel
· Incident response procedures: containment, eradication, and documentation workflows
· Threat intelligence basics: phishing recognition, credential-stuffing patterns, social engineering indicators
· CompTIA CySA+ for SOC analyst specialization (after Security+)

What it takesSome new skills to pick up

Tools of the era

How has the work of computer user support specialists changed since 1981?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

IBM PC + phone-and-spreadsheet support (pre-ticketing era)
The IBM PC (August 1981) created the role before anyone had built the tools to support it. The first corporate help desks operated with rotary phones, paper logs, and whatever spreadsheet the most technically inclined person had improvised. Support was delivered by telephone or walking desk-to-desk. The "ticket" was a Post-it note or a line in a notebook. There was no routing, no priority queue, no knowledge base -- just the accumulated personal knowledge of a handful of technicians who had learned to coax MS-DOS into cooperating and to diagnose the hardware conflicts that IBMs and clones generated in profusion. IBM coined the term "help desk" during this era to describe the telephone-based support centers it built for its own enterprise customers. The support specialist's primary tools were the hardware service manual, a multimeter, and a phone.
Effect on the work
The IBM PC created the role from scratch. Before 1981, end-user computing support was not a recognized occupational category. Within a decade, tens of thousands of people held positions that had not existed before the PC launched.
ITIL v1 + Remedy ARS (structured ticketing and process formalization)
Two developments in 1989 changed the craft into a profession. In the UK, the British government's Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency published the first edition of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), a 40-volume set of best practices covering help-desk management, incident management, change management, and service-level agreements. ITIL gave the field a shared vocabulary -- incident, problem, change, service request -- that it still uses today. Concurrently, Remedy Corporation (founded November 1990) shipped its Action Request System in late 1991: the first purpose-built help-desk ticketing platform, which generated a trouble ticket automatically from a user's description and routed it to the appropriate technician. At $6,500 for a three-seat server license, Remedy ARS was expensive, but it introduced the fundamental workflow -- submit, triage, assign, resolve, close -- that all subsequent ITSM platforms would follow. By the mid-1990s, email was beginning to supplement phone-based submission, and self-service knowledge bases (collections of known issues and resolutions) were appearing at larger organizations.
Effect on the work
ITIL and ticketing software did not reduce headcount; they made it possible to scale. Before structured ticketing, the practical limit on a help desk's coverage was how many calls one person could take per shift. Remedy ARS allowed a single support organization to manage hundreds of concurrent requests, enabling the explosive headcount growth of the 1990s Internet boom.
CompTIA A+ certification (1993) -- credential-based professionalization
In 1993, the Computing Technology Industry Association -- CompTIA -- launched the A+ certification, the first vendor-neutral credential for end-user computing support. Previous certifications (Novell CNE, Microsoft MCSE) were vendor-specific and measured server administration skills; A+ was the first credential that validated the specific work of the PC support technician: hardware troubleshooting, operating-system configuration, network basics, and device installation. The original 1993 exam covered Windows 3.1, MS-DOS, hundreds of CPUs, floppy drives, and several kbps modems. CompTIA refreshed the credential every three years to track technology changes. The A+ transformed hiring: employers could screen candidates with a portable, verifiable credential rather than relying entirely on job-interview demonstrations. It standardized the lower bound of expected competency and created a visible career ladder (A+, then Network+, then Security+) that had not previously existed.
Effect on the work
The A+ credential enabled a labor market for entry-level support work that transcended firm-specific training.
Web-based ITSM portals + email ticketing (ServiceNow predecessor era)
In 1999, Crow Canyon Software launched the first help-desk platform built on Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint -- a significant shift from client-server ticketing toward web-accessible portals. By the early 2000s, most medium and large organizations had replaced phone-and-spreadsheet support with a structured web portal where users submitted tickets and could check status without calling. Email became the primary submission channel. Remote-desktop tools (pcAnywhere, Symantec, and eventually Microsoft's Remote Assistance in Windows XP, 2001) gave technicians the ability to take control of a user's machine without physically traveling to the desk -- the first major expansion of what one technician could cover. ServiceNow was founded in 2003 by Fred Luddy (former CTO of Peregrine Systems, the acquirer of Remedy) specifically to build a cloud-native ITSM platform. ITIL v3 (2007) introduced the concept of the "IT service catalog," reframing the help desk as a provider of named, SLA-backed services rather than a reactive break-fix operation.
Effect on the work
Remote-desktop support roughly doubled the number of incidents a single technician could resolve per shift (no desk visits for common problems). This productivity gain partly offset headcount pressure from the dot-com bust but did not materially reduce total employment, because ticket volume grew at least as fast as per-technician capacity.
Cloud ITSM platforms + mobile + ChatOps (ServiceNow, Jira SM, Slack integration)
ServiceNow went public in 2012 and rapidly became the dominant enterprise ITSM platform, displacing Remedy/BMC in many large organizations. Jira Service Management (Atlassian, formerly Jira Service Desk, 2013) captured the mid-market and developer-facing IT organizations. Slack (2013) and Microsoft Teams (2017) introduced conversational-interface ticketing: users could open a ticket from a chat message, and technicians could respond without leaving the messaging platform. Mobile MDM (mobile device management) tools such as VMware AirWatch and Microsoft Intune (launched as cloud MDM in 2012) added a new category of device-management work for user-support specialists: enrolling, provisioning, and troubleshooting smartphones and tablets that had entered the enterprise. ITIL 4 (2019) introduced an Agile and DevOps-informed service model, shifting emphasis from process compliance toward value delivery and collaboration.
Effect on the work
Cloud ITSM and ChatOps made support faster but expanded scope: every mobile device, every cloud application, and every remote worker added tickets. Employment grew from 647,330 in 2019 to 697,210 in 2024, driven largely by the expansion of managed devices and the increase in remote workers requiring endpoint support.
Agentic AI service desks (Moveworks, Freshservice Freddy, ServiceNow Autonomous Workforce)
The 2020s brought the first technology in the role's history to directly substitute for, rather than augment, the L1 support technician. Moveworks (founded 2016, went viral in enterprise adoption from 2020) deployed conversational AI that resolved password resets, software access requests, and common troubleshooting questions autonomously via Microsoft Teams or Slack -- without a human in the loop. Freshservice's Freddy AI deflects 66% of incoming tickets autonomously, saving customers a reported many hours per month on average (UserEvidence survey data, 2026). Microsoft's own Employee Self-Service Agent (built on Copilot Studio, deployed internally May 2026) handles a large share of support interactions in Europe North. Moveworks at Broadcom reports 88% autonomous resolution. These are not pilot programs -- they are production deployments at Fortune 500 organizations, resolving the ticket categories that historically consumed the majority of L1 support time: password resets, software provisioning, access requests, basic hardware questions. The role is bifurcating: volume L1 work is automating; complex cross-system troubleshooting, major-incident coordination, and AI-platform administration are not.
Effect on the work
The BLS 2024-34 projections show employment decline. The BLS notes explicitly that automated chatbots and troubleshooting tools are the primary driver of the decline. The true structural shift may be larger than the BLS projection captures: most major agentic AI service-desk deployments launched after the 2024 projection cycle's calibration window.

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Computer User Support Specialists employment and pay by year

On record since1981

Latest US employment717,190 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$61,860 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook-3.5% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

In other countries

The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.

Canada (NOC 22221)
Employment, 2020
61,155, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 22221 User support technicians, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
Median pay, 2020
C$63,200, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 22221 User support technicians, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
United Kingdom (UK SOC 3132)
Employment, 2025
152,000, ONS ASHE 2025 Official statistic Report an errorONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Table 14): employee jobs in SOC 3132 IT user support technicians, United Kingdom, 2025 (ASHE "number of jobs", thousands x1000; excludes self-employment). Open Government Licence v3.0.
Median pay, 2025
£34,314, ONS ASHE 2025 Official statistic Report an errorONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Table 14.7a): median gross annual pay for all employee jobs in SOC 3132 IT user support technicians, United Kingdom, 2025. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Australia (ANZSCO 3131)
Employment, 2025
74,000, ABS Labour Force Survey Official statistic Report an errorABS Labour Force Survey (Detailed), table EQ08: employed persons in ANZSCO 3131 ICT Support Technicians, national (summed across sex and state/territory), annual average of 4 quarterly estimates.
Median pay, 2025
A$87,724, ABS Employee Earnings May 2025 Official statistic Report an errorAnnualised (x52) from A$1,687 median weekly earnings. ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025: median pay for full-time non-managerial employees paid at the adult rate, before tax. Surfaced via the Jobs and Skills Australia occupation profile.

View all 9 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1990	125,000	n/a	Est., US Census Bureau Researched context	Report
2000	565,000	n/a	Est., BLS Career Outlook 2001 Researched context	Report
2019	647,330	$52,270	BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic	Report
2020	634,820	$52,690	BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic	Report
2021	654,310	$49,770	BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic	Report
2022	696,830	$57,890	BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic	Report
2023	689,700	$59,240	BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic	Report
2024	697,210	$60,340	BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic	Report
2025	717,190	$61,860	BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic	Report

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Where computer user support specialists go next

Information Security Analysts

IBM PC + phone-and-spreadsheet support (pre-ticketing era)IBM PC + phone-and-spreadsheet support1981–1991

ITIL v1 + Remedy ARS (structured ticketing and process formalization)ITIL v1 + Remedy ARS1989–1999

CompTIA A+ certification (1993) -- credential-based professionalizationCompTIA A+ certification1993–2005

Web-based ITSM portals + email ticketing (ServiceNow predecessor era)Web-based ITSM portals + email ticketing1999–2010

Cloud ITSM platforms + mobile + ChatOps (ServiceNow, Jira SM, Slack integration)Cloud ITSM platforms + mobile + ChatOps2010–2020

Agentic AI service desks (Moveworks, Freshservice Freddy, ServiceNow Autonomous Workforce)Agentic AI service desks2020–present

Computer User Support Specialists employment and pay by year

In other countries

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