Updated on 12 October 2026. What’s new: the PMP exam fee is now USD $425 for PMI members and USD $675 for non-members, and exams are delivered by Pearson VUE.
PMI's Global Project Management Talent Gap report (May 2025) counts 39.6 million project professionals worldwide and warns of a shortfall of up to 29.8 million by 2035. The shortage is not spread evenly. It bites hardest where projects are large, regulated and expensive to get wrong, which is why a PMP opens different doors in a hospital, a utility and a bank.

This article walks through seven sectors: construction, IT, healthcare, finance, energy, government and defence, and manufacturing. For each it says what a project manager actually does there, which domain knowledge employers expect on top of the credential, and how the PMP exam's own content lines up with that work. It also separates salary evidence you can check from the kind you cannot.
Is demand for project managers really rising, and in which sectors?
Yes, and PMI's own research is the best place to see it. The talent gap report models demand for project talent growing by 64% between 2025 and 2035, driven by capital investment and by industries rebuilding around new technology. PMI's announcement of the report names construction, manufacturing, IT services and healthcare among the sectors under the most pressure, and points to South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and China as the fastest-growing regions.