“Employers around the world who rely on mission-critical product development and building out their IT infrastructure have spoken,” said oDesk CEO, Gary Swart. “Open Source technology, led by PHP and MySQL, is by far the skill set in highest demand today.”

oDesk reports that worldwide demand specifically for PHP programmers is nearly double the next closest skill set. At almost 2,000 PHP jobs posted per month, PHP accounts for over 20 percent of all jobs posted by businesses on the leading preferred marketplace for both buyers and providers.

“PHP is superior to any other coding platform. It’s free, flexible, and offers a massive support community,” explained Nicholas Pregeant, owner of Innovative Web Solutions of New Orleans, and an active oDesk customer. “Plus, the extensive Open Source library of proven PHP and MySQL scripts are customizable, portable, and scalable for almost any web application.”

“oDesk offers screen captures of work in progress that virtually guarantees vendor accountability, and oDesk handles the payments,” said Pregeant. “Because I don’t have to worry about the trust- or back-office issues, I can concentrate on the project. oDesk is the only service that meets my needs.”

Top jobs list by programming skills (jobs per month):

PHP — 2,000
Flash — 1,000
Ajax - 600
ASP — 500
Java — 300

PHP Developers by Country:

India — 2,183
U.S. — 857
Ukraine — 420
Russia — 348
Pakistan — 324
Philippines — 239

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