Reports: You should have no trouble finding IT work
| This shouldn't be necessary. |
Though the national unemployment rate was 5.5 percent last month, the NACCB (National Association of Computer Consultant Businesses), a trade association representing IT staffing firms and solution-providers, reported this week that U.S. IT employment was at an all-time high in June, or 3,907,800 strong.
Culled from Bureau of Labor Statistics listings of IT-related jobs, the NACCB found that U.S. businesses have added almost 90,000 techies to their payrolls in 2008--while the national workforce lost 438,000 jobs. Coming off a lackluster 2006 and 2007, NACCB CEO Mark Roberts praised the "continued resilience of IT employment."
A similarly upbeat picture was painted by the new employment report released today by Dice, an IT staffing firm, which boasted nearly 87,000 job listings for IT professionals as of July 1, more than two-thirds of them for full-time roles. Only four percent of those in the HR and recruiting space believed that layoffs would be likely in the next six months. Meanwhile, over half said it was taking them longer to fill positions, with most citing a difficulty finding qualified tech pros as the chief reason.
Given both of these glowing reports about the IT job market, you might expect that if you quit your technology job today, you'd have employers beating down your door. But that doesn't take into account that these releases should be taken with moderate grains of salt, as both are from groups whose business is recruiting, and that benefit from individuals feeling confident in the job market.
In reality, there may not be jobs in your area of specialty--network systems and data communications analysts, for one, are expected to be the fastest growing U.S. job role between now and 2016, but programmers are expected to have a bumpier ride--and you may not love the work you're getting.
But a good computer job market--backed up by the conservative BLS more than once--should give you options, or at the very least, a chance to beat the recessionary odds.