The IT Technical Gap is directly proportional to the increase in IT Non Technical roles used to run IT Departments and Companies like accounting firms, with a larger focus on reducing costs instead of a Technology Department or Companies primary focus being about Technology,
IT is now just cost based race to to bottom where IT requires individuals to be jack's of all trades and specialize in Programming, Networking, Database Admin, Infrastructure, Storage and Security for an entry level salary and inhumane working hours.
This was working fine for the bean counters in the short term, just burn people out as there are plenty more in the market to throw onto the fire, however they are running out of people willing to be thrown onto the fire. .
For the Technical skills gap to be reduced, IT Management needs an overhaul.and IT needs to return to specialized specific roles and specialists salaries.
I am a jack of all trades in IT with 29 or so years of hands on experience in most aspects of IT and I left the industry 6 months ago, as I found myself mostly working around non technical people and doing non technical tasks to keep those non technical people happy. (Like a real life Office Space).