Tech grads get higher salary offers, but existing workers may face job perils

At Michigan State University, a career day this week was filled with IT recruiters, said Kelly Bishop, executive director of career services at the East Lansing-based school. The interest being shown by recruiters is higher than it was in previous years, he said. Companies that had been holding off from hiring new employees are now moving to do so, according to Bishop.

He said he thinks that a major reason for the increased interest is the looming retirements of baby boomers. But although Bishop sees more urgency on the part of employers to find new workers, he said that companies "are going to a lot of lengths to identify a relatively short list of people they consider are going to make a difference in their organization."

Prospective employers "are all eager to talk to you, but it's still going to be tough to get a job," Bishop said. "They are being incredibly selective."

For many established workers, the picture is less pretty than it is for new graduates. For instance, Electronic Data Systems Corp. said in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month that it was offering an early retirement program to about 12,000 of its 50,000 U.S. workers (download PDF).

Sun Microsystems Inc. said this week that it plans to cut 1,500 employees as part of a workforce reduction program announced in early August. And Intel Corp. recently confirmed that its IT staff is being cut by as much as 10% after an anonymous blogger described the layoff process in detail.

Those actions indicate that "midcareer workers better beware," said Ron Hira, an assistant professor of public policy at RIT and author of the book Outsourcing America (American Management Association, 2005).

"The same firms that are laying off thousands are clamoring that they need more foreign workers," Hira said. "One interpretation of this phenomenon is that companies have no interest in retraining or retaining incumbent workers to fill those positions."

On Monday, the U.S. government began issuing about 85,000 H-1B visas for its new fiscal year -- a total that is well short of what the high-tech industry says it needs for workers from overseas. Industry efforts to raise the annual H-1B cap have faltered as part of broader immigration-reform legislation, but proponents are still pushing Congress for an increase.

"Until we are emphatically told 'No' by the House and Senate leadership, we continue to make the case," said Robert Hoffman, vice president of government and public affairs at Oracle Corp. and co-chair of Compete America, a Washington-based lobbying group.

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