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USA: Jobs, jobs, jobs and too few candidates to fill them

by Lia Timson

Thursday, 19 June 2008

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In fact, some of our readers might have seen the Pennsylvanian stand at CeBIT Sydney this year where the state was not only recruiting workers, but also companies and investors.

Companies like Apprise Software (ERP), Cybersoft (security), Rajant Corporation (continuous availability) and ZedX Inc (agricultural web-based applications) were showcased.

But one of the local IT industry bodies, the Association for Information Systems (AIS) has declared there is a definite catastrophe afflicting the industry. It is anxious about what it calls the 'enrolment crisis in computing', a reality that also pains Australia.

“Some of us believe that this is the biggest threat to our field. It also represents a significant threat to organizations that cannot fill positions,” says the association’s private wiki.

While Bagley says she is not aware of an enrollment crisis, the AIS is setting up an inland on the virtual world Second Life to communicate better with undergraduate students. When launched, it will be a place where undecided students can explore technology careers, debunk some myths and teleport to universities and colleges to sample some of the IT courses on offer. Hopefully they will be pleasantly surprised by what IT promises.

But the prognosis for salaries isn’t very good with the InformationWeek US IT Salary Survey 2008 recently recording a fall in the median pay for the average IT professional for the first time in 11 years.

Albeit a small drop – salaries fell an average of US$1,000 a year – the prediction for growth is not rosy, given the weakening US economy, on-going outsourcing and what the publishers say is “an industry-wide mismatch between skills and job titles”.

The finding is in direct contrast to the above-inflation salary rises observed by researchers in Australia and New Zealand in the last 12 months.