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Inside the Industry: IT Employment Trends: Healthier than Most
From TechServe Alliance’s IT Services Update (Fall 2009)

In the face of rising national unemployment, IT workers in general continue to experience lower unemployment rates. While the overall unemployment rate averaged 8.5% in 2Q:09, it was much less for many IT occupations. If a low unemployment is considered a proxy for high demand, then computer programmers and database administrators are in high demand. Network systems and data communication analysts as well as computer software engineers are also seeing low unemployment numbers.



As companies work hard to keep IT workers on board, many businesses in IT/high-tech sectors are trimming wages and hours, which is generally consistent with overall trends. Despite an hourly wage increase of 2.3%, average weekly wages declined nationally by 0.7% in the past year because weekly hours dropped 2.9%.