Boom or Bust for IT Workers?

Whether it is "pink slip parties" in San Diego, the Washington DC beltway, or Chicago to encourage networking and placement of laid-off information technology (IT) workers or Wall Street analysts lamenting the condition of the tech-related stocks, much of the talk in the IT hot spots of the U.S. has been doom and gloom. Many other areas of the country, though, whose economies do not have a preponderance of dot-com companies that went bust are still trying hard to educate and retain IT workers.



The spin of the stories and headlines on the release of When Can You Start?, the latest IT employment survey from the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) gives some indication of the perceived condition of local IT worker situations. Demand for new IT workers is down from last year -- way down. The good news is the gap or shortage between workers needed and those available is shrinking quickly -- very quickly.



Only the executive summary of ITAA's report has been released so far, but the more salient findings include:

• Total projected IT demand will be for 900,000 new IT workers in 2001 -- a drop of 44 percent over 2000.
• The shortfall of 425,000 more positions than available workers in 2001, while still significant, is only one half of the shortfall reported 12 months ago.
• The IT workforce is currently 10.4 million individuals, accounting for seven percent of the U.S. labor force. Only 900,000 of those positions are in IT-based companies. 
• While IT-based companies will try to fill on average 19 IT positions for every two that non-IT companies seek to fill, non-IT companies' needs account for 71 percent of the 425,000 gap.
• Non-IT companies retain 82 percent of their IT employees "an acceptable length of time" versus only 74 percent of IT-based companies. An acceptable employment tenure for IT workers is defined as 36 months for non-IT businesses and 30 months for IT-based firms. Overall compensation, workplace flexibility, and frequent reviews/raises were cited as the most important retention tools. 
• Of the eight IT job clusters identified by the Northwest Center for Emerging Technologies, only two are expected to have increased demand over last year. Job opportunities in enterprise systems and network design/administration are expected to increase 65 percent and 13 percent respectively. 
• A four-year college degree is the best pre-hire training for four of the eight job categories; private technical school education ranked highest for two.

The study, based on telephone surveys of a random sample of 685 IT managers from IT-based and non-IT businesses, will be available for purchase on April 21. The executive summary of When Can You Start? is available on the ITAA website: http://www.itaa.org/

On a related note, the Immigration and Naturalization Service reports that the number of H-1B visas granted has dropped 30 percent from a year ago. To address the demand for IT workers, the IT industry lobbied successfully last year for an increase the number of H-1B available. According to an April 2 article in Computer Reseller News, three of the top 10 employers of H-1B immigrants, Motorola, Intel and Cisco Systems, recently reported layoffs.



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