IT workers are confident job seekers, says Harris Poll
The latest employee confidence index from Randstad Technologies suggests IT workers are rather bullish when it comes to their prospects of finding employment.
Tracking IT worker sentiment for the first quarter of 2014 via a Harris Poll survey, the study indicated a growing belief among IT workers that the economy is strengthening, with confidence jumping up 10 percentage points as per the study's measurements.
More than one-third of IT workers, or 35 percent, believe there are more jobs available this quarter, while 46 percent are confident in their ability to find a new job.
According to Randstad's president of technology and engineering Bob Dickey, IT workers are largely correct in that assumption.
When you consider that technology is seeping into nearly every sector and becoming more critical in every industry, there is a growing demand for technical talent to drive technology-based processes. Social media continues to explode, cloud computing remains a huge focus for companies and mobile technology is the new norm for a lot of business interactions.
While growth in employee confidence is certainly not relegated to IT (similar indexes suggest consumer attitudes are slowly climbing in most sectors), technology is incrementally expanding its reach, and in turn, bringing professionals along for the ride. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released data in April that showed IT unemployment has dipped down to 2.7 percent — far below the current average of 6.7 percent for all jobs — with IT consulting opportunities also breaking new records.
Randstad's Dickey pointed to U.S. News and World Report's Best Jobs 2014 index, which projected more than 140,000 new software developer positions to be added by 2022:
The growth of the technology profession overall is projected to continue at a steady pace for the foreseeable future. We believe the industry is on pace to match or exceed growth rates like this in a variety of positions spanning the gamut of computer systems analysts to web developers and computer programmers.
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