The Australian economy is softening but demand for IT executives continued to rise in May, according to a new report. However, the demand for senior IT people still lags way behind demand for executives from all other sectors.

The monthly E.L Executive Demand Index, from executive firm E.L Consult, shows that demand for positions such as CIO, MIS manager, network manager, specialist programmer, software manager, systems architect and business systems analyst, rose 5% in May.

However, even though demand for executives in all other sectors fell significantly, demand for IT executives was still less than half the demand for the next least popular categories engineers, senior management and marketing executives. Finance executives, despite suffering a 22% decline in May, were almost four times as in demand as IT executives for the month.

According to E.L Consult, the increased demand for IT executives in May, as in April, was largely driven by government sector projects, with demand in the business sector actually dropping. The fact that demand for IT executives and executives from all other sectors dropped in May outside the government points to an economic downturn and talk of interest rate cuts is on the cards once again.