More good news, bad news on IT employment

By Jake Widman
Tuesday, 07 July 2009 00:28

Market

Analysis of recent U.S. government employment surveys shows the loss of IT jobs has slowed, even as the unemployment rate for IT workers sits at a five-year low.

The economy added about 44,000 new IT jobs in the second quarter, as revealed in household surveys by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That's a positive sign amidst generally gloomy employment news: the IT market has shed about 340,000 jobs since this tim last year.

An analysis of the most recent survey in InformationWeek found that despite the addition of so many new jobs, the unemployment rate among IT workers nevertheless rose slightly to 5.5 percent. The addition of new people to the IT workforce meant there weren't enough new jobs to accommodate them.

The household surveys ask people to classify themselves by job type, and the choices include eight IT job categories.

The biggest second quarter employment declines were in computer scientists and systems analysts (down 17 percent since last year) and software engineers (down 12 percent).

These results, combined with last week's reports and projections, could offer those inclined toward optimism a reason to think that IT will be one of the earliest job sectors to see some recovery from the worldwide recession.