As a graphic designer, I'm always trying to not only learn new skills but to learn what skills I need to learn. Of course, the demand for these skills is dictated by the market. I recently started an account with Elance.com, and I immediately noticed that they provide numerical data on their Web and Programming page for skills that are in demand. After some number crunching, I calculated the percentage of the total that each skill on that page represents. Here's the breakdown of the skills and their percentages of the total:

1. 10.92% PHP
2. 8.92% HTML
3. 7.98% SQL
4. 6.40% MySQL
5. 6.20% Flash
6. 5.45% CSS
7. 4.72% SEO
8. 4.08% .NET
9. 3.66% WordPress
10. 2.79% C
11. 2.70% AJAX
12. 2.60% Joomla!
13. 2.58% Java
14. 2.18% Web Services
15. 2.18% ASP
16. 2.13% XHTML
17. 2.07% Social Networking
18. 2.05% Windows
19. 2.02% Adobe Flash
20. 2.02% iPhone
21. 1.90% XML
22. 1.88% Facebook
23. 1.60% Twitter
24. 1.56% PayPal
25. 1.37% ASP.NET
26. 1.26% JavaScript
27. 1.16% Linux
28. 1.09% Drupal
29. 0.95% RSS
30. 0.78% SQL Server
31. 0.68% osCommerce
32. 0.59% Apache
33. 0.53% CRM
34. 0.51% DHTML
35. 0.50% Google Website Optimizer
    

So what can I make of these results? Most of what I came up with is not surprising. I'm well aware that PHP, HTML, MySQL, Flash, CSS, and SEO, of course, are common skills that are in demand. It's a good idea for any web developer to be proficient in most of these skills.

I may be just a bit surprised by some of what I'm seeing. JavaScript, for instance, at 1.26 percent is lower on the list than what I thought it might be. I'm also new to some of these technologies such as Joomla and Drupal. Wordpress, a relatively new technology, seems to be really taking off at 3.66 percent.

Anyway, I hope this information is useful to my clients. You can never know too much about what web development tools are available to you, and this information proves it.

Joe Jagella--FreeforAll Designs