Optimistic outlook for 2003

2002 was certainly a dismal year for IT employment, but the Information Technology Association of America reports that the workforce continued to stabilize in the third quarter.

According to the ITAA's quarterly update, there was a net gain of 147,000 IT jobs in the third quarter. U.S. firms hired 359,000 IT workers over the last three months, while dismissing 211,000.

Overall, companies hired 1,183,500 IT workers hired from October 2001 and October 2002. There also were fewer layoffs, with 844,000 tech workers dismissed between October 2001 and October 2002, compared to 2,619,000 between January 2001 and January 2002.

"Both hiring and dismissals are far below January numbers, which may signal a stabilization of the IT workforce after the roller coaster of recent year," ITAA President Harris Miller says. "We are also seeing more optimism than last quarter on the part of hiring managers as they anticipate their needs over the next year."

Conducted in October 2002, the ITAA quarterly update is based on interviews with 300 hiring managers. The study also contains the Dice Tech Skills Profile, an addendum compiled from job listings of online recruiter Dice.com.

Here are some of the report's highlights:

* IT managers forecast they will need to hire an additional 1,183,000 workers over the coming months, a prediction that is roughly on par with their plans at the beginning of the year. This number represents an improvement compared to July projections, indicating increased optimism on behalf of hiring managers.

* The same tech skills continue to be in high demand, according to the Dice Tech Skills Profile. Culled from Dice.com job listings, the top skills employers are requesting include Oracle, Java, SQL software and NT.

* Hirings by non-IT companies outpace IT companies by twelve-to-one.

* Nearly half of all IT hires in the third quarter were tech support workers. Hiring for Web developers and database developers increased 5.4% and 5.3% respectively since January 2002. However, hiring of network administrators dropped by 8.5% since the beginning of 2002, from 733,000 to 671,000.

For more information about the survey, go to www.itaa.org

Demand for IT pros shrank in 2001

Amy Schurr is an editor for Network World's Management Strategies and Features sections. If you have any career topics you'd like her to cover or want to comment on this newsletter, you can reach her at aschurr@nww.com.

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