IT Confidence Remains High

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Originally published at Internet.com

Over the past two years that recruiting and staffing company Spherion Corp. has been tracking IT employee confidence, the numbers have been rising.

External conditions surrounding the U.S. economy - unrest due to the Iraq War, for example - have led to a very slight dip in IT employee confidence in the first quarter of 2007 compared to last, down to 58 from 59.4. But that dip shouldn't lead IT leaders to be too confident about their ability to retain their most talented staff.

"The most telling fact to take out of this survey is that IT employee overall confidence in the economy and the future of employability and availability of jobs is higher than that of the general worker," says Brendan Courtney, senior VP and group executive for Spherion's professional services group. "Frankly, they should be. They are less at risk of losing their jobs or not being able to find one."

IT continues to be a major driver of the U.S. economy, he says, which is a big factor in these results.

"Corporations are expanding and companies are still in a growth mode," he says. "With that growth, IT fuels business expansion in today's day and age. IT workers have opportunities and real confidence in their ability to find a job."

In fact, three-quarters of surveyed workers believe it is unlikely they will lose their job, increasing one percentage point from the fourth quarter of last year, according to the survey, which Harris Interactive conducted on behalf of Spherion.

The demand for IT workers continues to be quite strong, and unemployment is at one of the all-time lows for the profession, he notes. That goes across all sectors of the profession, whether on the application development and project side or on the infrastructure and systems support end.

The pent-up demand for IT-driven innovation that was unleashed in 2005, after the dot-com bomb, is still going strong in 2007.

That's particularly true in the service sector, especially financial services, and the communications sector, thanks to emerging technologies such as VoIP, says Courtney. A few sectors - real estate and manufacturing - are lagging a bit, but even among these industries enough changes are taking place that are driving additional business-technology initiatives.

Companies, and their IT leadership, need to get aggressive about their retaining and recruiting strategies, says Courtney. Thirty-four percent of information technology workers are likely to look for a new job in the next 12 months - while that's down 12 percentage points from the previous quarter, it's still a significant figure.

"The reality of the IT market as it stands is that wages have increased at a higher rate than general-use workers, and companies are more willing to be flexible as it relates to work-life balances, and the reality is that people have more leverage with their employers," he says.

Among the strategies businesses are trying are retention bonuses and creating non-cash compensation for mission critical IT people.

Long-term, the picture potentially gets a bit cloudier for American IT workers, though. The country isn't educating - or re-educating - IT professionals as fast as the job market is expanding, Courtney says.

"The H1B Visa program is bringing in exteremly well-educated, talented and lower-cost contract labors," he says. "That has a real meaningful impact on the IT community." As, of course, does offshore outsourcing.

But for now, things are pretty darn good.