* IT Employment Report
IT workers may be slightly less confident about the economy and job availability, but they’re still confident about their personal employment situations. Those are the findings of the Spherion IT Employment Report that focuses on workforce trends among U.S. IT pros.
Conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of staffing firm Spherion, the report features the IT Employee Confidence Index. The index dropped by 1.4 points to 58 in the first quarter of 2007. Only 24% of respondents agreed the economy is getting stronger, down from 32% in the fourth quarter of 2006. Those who have a positive outlook regarding job availability also dropped. In the first quarter of 2007, 29% of those surveyed believed there were more jobs, whereas 33% did the previous quarter. There’s good news for IT leaders looking to retain their staff, just 34% of IT workers are likely to look for a new job in the next year. That’s down 12% from the fourth quarter of 2006.
Interestingly, though, IT workers remain confident about their own job security. Last quarter a full 75% said it’s unlikely they’ll lose their job, as compared to 74% in the previous quarter.
“The confluence of a growing tech economy, the recent Web 2.0 renaissance and the steady decline in science and engineering graduates has created an abundance of open IT jobs with nobody to fill them,” says Brendan Courtney, senior vice president of Spherion. “That being said, more high tech employers are offering existing employees retention incentives to remain competitive, so it is not surprising to see IT workers feeling confident about their job security.
