September 22, 2003
(Computerworld)
DALLAS -- Unemployment in the IT profession reached 6% this year, an "unprecedented" level for a career path that until recently was a sure way to a well-paying job.
That's the finding of a new study that also determined that foreign-born workers now account for a fifth of all IT employees in the U.S.
The results of the study, conducted by the Washington-based nonprofit group Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST), mesh with what IT managers have seen in response to help-wanted ads they have placed.
"I'm sure the number is 6% or higher," said Michael Russo, a data center manager at Wyeth, a Madison, N.J.-based drug company.
A recent third-shift job in the company's operational data center drew 168 applicants. "There are a lot of people who are out of work," Russo said.
Randy Rosenthal, manager of computer operations at Southwest Securities Group Inc. in Dallas, has seen the same trend: highly qualified people with multiple degrees applying for lower-level jobs that IT managers once had trouble filling.
"That tells me that 6% has hit the IT area pretty hard," Rosenthal said.
Two years ago, Salt River Project had an open position for an operations analyst and received about 15 applications. Last year, the Tempe, Ariz.-based water and electric company posted a similar position and had 50 applicants. This year, the 800,000-customer utility has a hiring freeze, said operations manager Dewayne Nelsen.
There was a sense of grim resignation about the report among some IT managers at a conference held here last week by AFCOM, an Orange, Calif.-based data center managers' user group.
Several IT managers, some requesting that their names not be used, told of offshore outsourcing plans or data center consolidations that led to layoffs.
In the future, automation improvements and the development of "self-healing" applications will also hurt some IT career paths, they said. The career advice from one IT manager was to avoid the technical aspects of the profession and focus more on IT management.
Growth Spurt
IT unemployment rates were as low as 1.2% in 1997, shooting up to 4.3% in 2002.
But the overall number of IT jobs has seen remarkable growth, tripling in the past 20 years, according to the CPST, which conducts labor force and educational research for a range of scientific organizations and companies.
The IT labor force, which under CPST's definition includes computer scientists, systems analysts, software engineers and programmers, grew from 719,000 jobs in 1983 to 2.5 million at its peak in 2000. It has since declined by 150,000, with about two-thirds of those lost jobs in programming, according to the organization.
The CPST report was sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the United Engineering Foundation, an umbrella organization of engineering groups.
FACTOID
11.4%
of all native IT workers were located in California in 2002; nearly a third of all foreign-born IT workers were in that state.
Source: Commission on Professionals in Technology and Science
FACTOID
37,500
new IT degrees were awarded in 1998-99.
53,000
were awarded in 2000-01.