infoTECH Feature

March 11, 2010

IT Job Market Looking Better?

By Lance Whitney
How is the IT job market fairing in 2010 so far? Nothing to write home about just yet but still better than it’s been in awhile, at least according to one report.
 
Employment for IT pros rose 0.3 percent in January over the prior month, followed by an additional 0.37 percent gain in February, said the TechServe Alliance, a consortium of IT service firms, clients, consultants, and suppliers.
 
Though a fraction of a percentage point doesn't sound like much, the employment growth for the past two months has added more than 25,000 IT jobs to the U.S. market overall, with 14,000 of them just in February, according to TechServe. As a result, the total number of IT jobs recorded and tracked by the group now stands at more than 3.8 million.
 
Looking at the big picture, IT employment is still around 3 percent lower than in was in February of last year. But this year’s two-month sequential rise so far is a promising sign. After reaching a peak in November 2008, the number of IT jobs continued to fall through August of last year. The job market then stayed essentially flat until January’s increase.
 
 
TechServe's CEO Mark Roberts (News - Alert) sees the accelerating growth in February as an indication that the gains in January were not an anomaly. He's upbeat about this year's initial IT job rise as a positive signal for the future. Roberts feels the numbers reflect a new sense of optimism among business executives who are finally reversing the cutbacks necessitated by the recession and diving into IT projects that had been put on the back burner.
 
For the rest of the year, the TechServe CEO is looking for job growth to improve further for both IT services and professionals.
 
How accurate are TechServe's numbers? It sounds like the group has a good beat on the market. Here's how TechServe comes up with its findings:
 
TechServe said that its IT Employment Index is created monthly by analyzing the staffing patterns of a dozen different IT and computer jobs in 16 different industries, including manufacturing, retail, financial, business, education, and health services. The index is based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which change each month.
 
So for all you IT pros reading this column: what do you see happening in your own corner of the world? Have you found any traces of job growth yet, or are you still waiting for that much-anticipated rebound in employment? Please share your comments below.

Lance Whitney is a journalist, IT consultant, and Web Developer with almost 20 years of experience in the IT world. To read more of Lance's articles, please visit his columnist page

Edited by Kelly McGuire
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