600,000 of these jobs to remain unfilled

Date: Thursday, May 30, 2002 10:36 AM

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http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,70888,00.htm
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Study: IT workforce down 5%

By JULIA KING
MAY 06, 2002

INGTON, Va. -- The good news is that U.S. companies hired 2.1 million

IT
workers last year.
The bad news is that they fired 2.6 million, reducing the overall IT
workforce by about 5%, to 9.9 million workers, according to results of a
national IT workforce study released here today by the Information
Technology Association of America.

At the top of companies' 2001 layoff lists were technical support
workers,
such as help desk and customer service center employees, whose ranks
were
reduced by more than 911,000. Other losing job categories included
database
developers and software programmers/engineers, which lost 445,000 and
487,000 jobs, respectively.

The groups that lost the fewest number of jobs were digital media
specialists, technical writers and enterprise systems support workers.

Results of the ITAA study were based on interviews with 532 hiring
managers
at companies with more than 50 employees. Interviews were conducted in
February and March of this year.

According to ITAA President Harris Miller, hiring managers rated
specific
industry and technical experience as the top factors they considered
when
interviewing IT job candidates. Less important were technical
certifications
and general work experience.

This doesn't bode well for the millions of graduates from college,
technical
study and certification programs who are now entering the IT job market.
Compounding this group's woes is the finding that companies are
targeting
the help desk and customer service as two areas to cut jobs. These same
two
areas are traditionally the biggest providers of entry-level IT
positions.

"Entry-level positions have been reduced significantly since [the
beginning]
of 2001," said Scott Melland, president of Dice Inc., an online job
posting
service.

Despite the grim layoff numbers, hiring managers in ITAA's survey also
said
they expect to create about 1.1 million IT jobs in the next year. But
due to
a so-called skills imbalance, they expect about 600,000 of these jobs to
remain unfilled.

There are indicators that the job market is returning, said Joanne
Peterson,
president of Abator Information Service Inc., an IT recruiting firm
Pittsburgh, but she added that she isn't willing to buy in to the ITAA's
numbers yet.

Peterson said many listings carried on online job boards are often
double or
triple dips. Various recruitment agencies often post the same job as
they
compete to get the position filled and capture the fee paid out by
hiring
companies.

Still, she said, the market seems to be coming back, and she thinks the
second half of the year might bring some real relief to job seekers. "If
I
had to guess, really guess, I would say the end of September," Peterson
said.

Regarding the ITAA's assertions that as many as 600,000 jobs will go
unfilled due to a lack of qualified candidates, Peterson isn't buying
that
at all.

"I think we could staff every real job that is open with people who are
not
working," Peterson said. "I don't think we need to go to India to get a
job
filled."

Brian Sullivan contributed to this article.

Source: Computerworld

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