<<<<< JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER  No. 1810 -- 1/23/2008 >>>>>

Informationweek published a good series of articles on the debate about IT
worker shortages. Dr. Ron Hira's article "No, The Tech Skills Shortage
Doesn't Exist" is particularly good. Overall the arguments on both sides
are debated skillfully, except for one moronic statement by Chris Murphy:

   But our recent survey found something surprising: Business
   technology managers and staffers hold very similar views on
   whether there's a shortage. About two-thirds of both groups
   see some signs of a shortage.

I almost was willing to give Murphy the benefit of the doubt because he
included "staffers" with managers, which at first blush seems to balance
the survey out. The problem is that the staffers are just a bunch of HR
toadies. How's that for a scientific survey?

   The most prevalent view--by 45% of managers and 40% of staff--is
   that there's a shortage only in certain IT specialties and some
   geographies. Another quarter of staffers and 29% of managers see
   a shortage in many IT areas, according to our survey of 893
   managers and 270 staffers involved in the IT hiring process.


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Articles Used
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http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/01/hard_facts_to_f.ht
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Hard Facts To Fuel The IT Talent Shortage Debate


http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601556

No, The Tech Skills Shortage Doesn't Exist


http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601557

Yes, The Tech Skills Shortage Is Real


http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601558

Majority Of Staff And Managers See Some Sign Of IT Talent Shortage

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http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/01/hard_facts_to_f.ht
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Hard Facts To Fuel The IT Talent Shortage Debate

Posted by Chris Murphy, Jan 12, 2008 09:13 AM

We've got a great debate posted with two top researchers over whether
there's a U.S. IT talent shortage. If you're keen on fear-mongering and
histrionics, this package isn't for you. If you want two serious scholars
making succinct arguments backed up with facts, read on.

Here are excerpts from the two professors' articles.

Professor Ron Hira acknowledges the IT job market's been OK, but he
contends there's no shortage. He offers a risk-benefit analysis for U.S. IT
workers -- and concludes that the threats, like the huge workforces U.S.
tech firms are building abroad, aren't offset by relatively modest pay
raises.

    In addition, the risk of technological obsolescence and age
discrimination are higher in IT relative to other professions. How many
physicians or pharmacists become obsolete at age 40? Put in this context,
it’s hard to believe that the very modest wage gains of the past few
years balance the increases in IT employee risk.

Professor Jerry Luftman sees a critical IT talent shortage and contends it
will only get worse as baby boomers retire. And he laments the lack of
action that he says is causing a "skills famine" across science, tech,
engineering, and math:

    U.S. IT executives have reported their concerns about the talent
shortage of qualified American job seekers, and they have been largely
ignored. As far back as 1998, the Society for Information Management (SIM)
stated that educational institutions, organizations, and government must
"take decisive action now" to address the shortage of skilled IT pros. Nine
years down the road, IT leaders still report that their greatest challenge
is recruiting the right IT people and then developing and retaining them.

A third piece in our package tries to assess what you think, based on a
survey of more than 1,000 people involved in the tech hiring process. The
conclusion:

    The most prevalent view -- by 45% of managers and 40% of staff -- is
that there's a shortage only in certain IT specialties and some
geographies. Another quarter of staffers and 29% of managers see a shortage
in many IT areas. ... Twenty-three percent of managers and 29% of staffers
say there's no U.S. shortage.

The debate over whether there's a U.S. tech talent shortage will likely
intensify this year if there's an economic slowdown, even if it doesn't
take the same grim jobs toll it did earlier this decade. We hoped by giving
two of the top researchers in the field a platform to discuss the topic, it
would bring some fresh thinking and hard data to the topic. Let us know how
we did, and what you think.

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http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601556


No, The Tech Skills Shortage Doesn't Exist

Employers game the system and misrepresent the key market indicators.

Jan. 12, 2008

Employers claim there is a severe shortage of IT workers in the United
States. Listen in on any klatch of CIOs, and the conversation inevitably
turns to their difficulties finding talent. Microsoft's Bill Gates, Intel's
Craig Barrett, and other captains of tech industry argue that the situation
has reached crisis proportions.

But moving beyond anecdotal impressions and vested interests, the
employment and economic data paint another picture--one in which the IT
labor market is clearing and none of the indicators demonstrates a systemic
shortage. While exceptional talent or skills in emerging technologies will
always, by definition, be in short supply, the most relevant market
indicators--wages and employee risk--clearly show there's no broad-based
scarcity of U.S. IT workers. In their zeal to enlist government help to
expand the supply of tech workers through foreign guest worker programs,
employers are misrepresenting IT labor market conditions.

InformationWeek Reports

IS THERE A TECH TALENT SHORTAGE?

A key indicator of tightness in any labor market is wages--more
specifically, whether wages are rising much faster than the norm. IT worker
wages grew by a modest 2.9% in constant dollar terms from 2003 to 2005,
according to Department of Labor data compiled by the Commission on
Professionals in Science & Technology (CPST). This increase is indeed
greater than the average 0.6% growth for all professional occupations, but
the gains for IT workers were hardly robust and don't indicate any
significant scarcity. More recently, we've seen some growth in the wages
for newly minted bachelor's degree computer scientists, according to the
National Association for Colleges & Employers. Salaries for those
entry-level jobs rose from $50,744 in 2006 to $53,051 in 2007, an increase
of 4.5%. But those gains were almost completely gobbled up by inflation,
which ran about 4.3% in 2007.

Another factor in considering the relative health of the IT job market is
the level of risk employees face. As any investor will tell you, riskier
investments should have the higher potential payoffs. It's no different
with careers. While there are no formal measures of the risk and
uncertainty of IT careers, it's obvious that they have soared over the past
few years. The train wreck of 2002-2004 in the IT labor market derailed the
careers of many professionals; some tech pros haven't come back.

Modest wage gains don't balance the rise in employee risk.
---Ron Hira, Rochester Institute of Technology, Economic Policy Institute
Meantime, employer norms have shifted radically. Long gone are the days
when IBM never laid off a worker. Nowadays, companies don't think twice
about shipping IT work overseas or bringing in lower-cost foreign workers
to replace U.S. employees, and even asking American workers to train their
replacements. Intel's Barrett writes an op-ed piece about the shortage of
U.S. workers even when his own company is in the process of major layoffs,
shedding 14% of its workforce over the past two years.

In addition, the risk of technological obsolescence and age discrimination
are higher in IT relative to other professions. How many physicians or
pharmacists become obsolete at age 40? Put in this context, it's hard to
believe that the very modest wage gains of the past few years balance the
increases in IT employee risk.

The consequences of this new equilibrium play out most prominently in
career choices for those attending college. Enrollment of undergraduate
computer science majors in major U.S. colleges and universities has
plummeted an astounding 40% over the past four years, according to a survey
by the Computing Research Association. Many blame a lack of interest in the
tech field among young people, or our failing K-12 education system. But
the most likely explanation is that students, using an array of information
at their disposal, including advice from relatives in the field, have
decided that IT isn't as attractive an option as it once was.
SHRINKING EXPECTATIONS
More than any other indicator, student choice is an excellent pulse on the
outlook for the U.S. IT labor market. The good news is that enrollments
have stabilized, perhaps in reaction to the bottoming out of the tech
recession. Even so, shrinking expectations of the size of the IT labor
market are supported by the lackluster growth over the past few years, as
well as by the future growth forecast by the Department of Labor. IT
employment was slightly more than 3 million in 2006, up 2.2% from 2004, but
those gains lagged the overall U.S. employment growth of 3.7% over the same
period, according to CPST. Meantime, the employment outlook continues to
weaken.

In 2000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that the United States
would have 4,894,000 IT jobs by 2010. Since then, the bureau has
consistently ratcheted down its forecasts, with the most recent projecting
3,522,000 IT jobs in 2010. I don't advocate using these forecasts as
destiny, since the bureau has no way of accounting for important factors
that will affect IT labor growth, whether it's on the downside (offshoring)
or upside (technological breakthroughs). But it's one more important
indicator of IT job market trends.

The average unemployment rate for IT occupations in 2007 was 2%, according
to Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers released earlier this month, the same
rate as for professional occupations as a whole. This compares favorably
with the record high unemployment rates for IT workers just a few years
ago. In 2003 the unemployment rate in IT was 5.5%, compared with 3.2% for
all professional occupations.

We must take into account, however, that many of the IT workers laid off
between 2002 and 2004, but who never made it back into the profession,
aren't counted in the unemployment rolls. If an IT worker became a clerk at
Home Depot or dropped out of the labor market, then he's no longer counted.
And the surveys don't pick up underemployed workers.

IMPORTATION OF WORKERS
Some have pointed to the run on H-1B visas as an indicator of strong U.S.
demand for IT labor. For example, in 2007 the base cap of 65,000 visas, for
those workers holding no more than a bachelor's degree or having equivalent
experience, was exhausted on the first day petitions were accepted for
fiscal year 2008 by the Citizenship and Immigration Services.

But this self-serving explanation ignores the real reasons for the
voracious appetite for foreign workers: their lower cost and the offshore
outsourcing business model. With help from Congress, employers and
university lobbyists have designed large loopholes into the H-1B program,
letting employers legally pay below-market wages to those workers. Also,
the H-1B and L-1 guest worker visa programs are vital to the offshore
outsourcing business model, as U.S. companies rotate employees for
knowledge transfer and to shift work overseas. So vital are these visas to
the offshore outsourcing industry that India's commerce minister, Kamal
Nath, calls the H-1B the "outsourcing visa" and has demanded that the
United States increase the cap.

chart: Top paying jobs for 2006 grads
We see both of these trends manifested in the wages of new H-1B computer
workers, which dropped 16% from $59,708 in 2002 to $50,000 by 2005 in
constant 2005 dollars. If wage gains have been modest under the current
H-1B cap of 85,000 (plus exemptions for university and nonprofit research
employers), what will happen to wages if the massive expansion being pushed
by Compete America, the deep-pocketed lobbying coalition of industry and
universities, were to be passed? The coalition has lobbied for uncapped
exemptions for large categories of workers.

As if something out of Thank You For Smoking, the Hollywood spoof on
lobbying, tech employers have repeatedly misrepresented the state of the
U.S. IT labor market, saying that their use of guest worker programs
prevents offshoring by redressing domestic shortages. Employers say they
hire foreign guest workers only as a last resort, when they can't find U.S.
workers. But their real motivations for a cap increase are quite different.

The public face of Compete America has been Robert Hoffman, a VP for
government affairs at Oracle. In interviews, Hoffman never mentions that
Oracle owns offshore IT outsourcing vendor I-flex, a top 20 user of H-1B
visas. Like other offshore outsourcing firms, I-flex rotates its foreign
workers into and out of the United States under H-1B and L-1 visas and
hires very few Americans. As an I-flex exec told National Public Radio's
Marketplace program, "Most of the people coming through us have no
intention of settling in the United States. These are folks who are coming
here to do a job, have fun while they can in the United States, and then
use this experience in different parts of the world." Oracle isn't the only
company with an offshore outsourcing arm. EDS owns Mphasis and Computer
Sciences Corp. recently purchased Covansys.

To make matters worse, major news publications have falsely claimed that
the H-1B program requires employers to demonstrate there's a shortage of
U.S. workers before hiring an H-1B worker. The Department of Labor's 2006
Strategic Plan puts it bluntly: "H-1B workers may be hired even when a
qualified U.S. worker wants the job, and a U.S. worker can be displaced
from the job in favor of the foreign worker."
CONSIDER OBJECTIVE DATA
Every major HR department benchmarks the labor market with objective data,
such as offer acceptance rates (the likelihood a candidate who's offered a
job accepts), signing bonuses, days jobs go unfilled, and wage increases.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported in 2005 that Microsoft's offer
acceptance rates were an astoundingly high 90%-plus. A rate greater than
50% is considered a sign that employers are facing little competition for
talent.

Duke University's Vivek Wadhwa took my advice to ask for this kind of hard
data when he designed a study to determine whether there was a shortage of
engineers. He found no such shortage in the United States. Another recent
study, by Hal Salzman of the Urban Institute and Lindsay Lowell of
Georgetown University, drew a similar conclusion.

Many of the indicators cited above are at the macro level, but there isn't
a single IT labor market. Instead, diverse labor markets vary by geography,
skill set, experience, and other factors. And this is where we need a much
more nuanced discussion of what is really in demand and what is available.

Based on the indicators I've cited, my judgment is that the U.S. IT labor
market overall is doing OK, for now. We're seeing modest wage growth and
indications that college enrollments in tech-related programs have bottomed
out. There's no shortage of supply, but there are many looming threats to
the domestic workforce as firms build huge labor capacity overseas.
Accenture passed a milestone in August, with more employees in India
(35,000) than in any other country. IBM will have 100,000 workers in India
by 2010, rivaling its U.S. head count. During the next tech recession,
those companies will downsize in Boston before Bangalore.

chart: Jobless rates in IT vs. other occupations.
What drove us out of the tech labor recession of the early 1990s was the
mass move to client-server computing, the widespread corporate adoption of
ERP software, the move to object-oriented programming, and, of course, the
Internet. How much of future tech breakthroughs will be filled by low-cost
foreign labor versus U.S. labor remains to be seen.

We must move beyond the "he said, she said" op-ed analyses to a cooperative
dialogue among the various interest groups: employers, university
administrators, and worker groups. Employers have a strong interest in
claiming there are worker shortages because it provides them with public
relations cover for outsourcing, it induces more people to enter the field,
it justifies flooding the market with lower-cost foreign workers, and it
gets additional government dollars thrown at the so-called problem.
Universities overhired computer science, IT, and MIS faculty during the
boom times and thus have a strong incentive to present the rosiest picture
possible to attract new students. And, of course, incumbent workers have an
interest in keeping supply low.

It's time to break this logjam with some cold, hard facts and sound
judgment.

Dr. Ron Hira is an assistant professor of public policy at Rochester
Institute of Technology, where he specializes in engineering workforce
issues and high-skill immigration. He's a past chairman of IEEE-USA's
Career & Workforce Policy Committee, a research fellow at the Economic
Policy Institute, and co-author of the book Outsourcing America (AMACOM,
2005)..

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http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601557


Yes, The Tech Skills Shortage Is Real

The IT skills famine plaguing the United States is only going to get worse.

Jan. 12, 2008
URL:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601557


The demand for IT skills has become ubiquitous across every industry
globally. The market for IT professionals is strong and is still the
fastest-growing sector in the U.S. economy, with more than a million new
jobs projected to be added between 2004 and 2014. Five of the 30
occupations projected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to grow the
fastest by 2016 are IT-related, led by network and data communications
analysts, software engineers, and systems analysts.

The growth in IT-related positions is driven by new opportunities to
leverage technology in the organization, and by businesses recognizing the
impact that IT can have on revenue. Another important factor contributing
to the growth in demand for IT talent is beginning to appear in news
headlines: "By 2010, 40% of the U.S. workforce is set to retire." The
Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that in 2010, there will be 52% more
people in the 55-to-64 age bracket than there were in that age group in
2000. Organizations will face significant knowledge loss because of
retirements over the coming decade.

InformationWeek Reports

IS THERE A TECH TALENT SHORTAGE?
Survey Results:
Is There A Tech Talent Shortage
Take Our Poll:
What's your take on the IT talent shortage?
Join the discussion in our forums
But is there an IT talent shortage? Yes. Skilled IT professionals are
scarce already, and the short supply is stressing organizational growth
plans. Add to this the impending baby boomer retirement bubble, and the
situation worsens. As 70 million baby boomers exit the workforce in the
next 15 years, only 40 million people will enter the workforce. McKinsey &
Co. predicts that over the next three decades the demand for experienced IT
professionals between the ages of 35 and 45 will increase by 25%, while the
supply will decrease by 15%.

U.S. IT executives have reported their concerns about the talent shortage
of qualified American job seekers, and they have been largely ignored. As
far back as 1998, the Society for Information Management (SIM) stated that
educational institutions, organizations, and government must "take decisive
action now" to address the shortage of skilled IT pros. Nine years down the
road, IT leaders still report that their greatest challenge is recruiting
the right IT people and then developing and retaining them. In a 2007 SIM
survey of 130 senior IT execs, 51% cited "attract, develop, and retain IT
professionals" as a top concern, more than any other factor.

Americans don't appear to be rushing to gain the IT-related skills that
organizations are looking for. The National Center for Education finds that
only 13% of graduate degrees awarded in the United States are science
degrees. Undergraduate enrollments in computer science between 2001 and
2006 dropped 40%. Educators in K-12 school systems have reported declines
in math and science competence in their graduates. Close to a third of all
teenagers drop out before they graduate from high school. Public school
teachers and counselors are unable to communicate the opportunities
available in IT. Parents aren't encouraging children to get into the IT
field because of the dot-com failures and inaccurate media reports about
all IT-related jobs going to India. Children are left disinclined to pursue
an IT career.


Students, parents, and counselors don't recognize IT career potential
-- Jerry Luftman, Stevens Institute of Technology, Society for Information
Management
Nearly 70% of middle school teachers lack education and certification in
mathematics, let alone computer and business skills, the National Center
for Education finds.
Some suggest that organizations should leverage the talent of foreign
students being educated in the United States. However, that pipeline's
getting weaker, too. In 2007, American colleges and universities received
27% fewer graduate applications from international students than in 2003.
F-1 visas issued to international students fell 10% between 2001 and 2005.
All of these factors are contributing to a famine in IT-related skills in
the U.S. marketplace.

Also, because of quotas, U.S. organizations haven't been able to bring
skilled foreign IT professionals on temporary visas and green cards into
the country. In a significant move, the European Union is pushing to
provide "blue cards" aimed at attracting foreign-born IT pros to combat the
shortage of tech talent in that region. If successfully implemented, the
blue cards would apply in all 27 EU member states, increasing their
economic competitiveness.
OUTSOURCING ISN'T THE ANSWER
The Society for Information Management, in its continuing concern about the
IT workforce, recently sponsored a survey of top IT management to determine
the skills and capabilities they want to hire and develop within their
organizations, and what they would obtain through service providers. The
results indicate that while some IT skills in the purely technical areas
(e.g., programming) will be obtained through sourcing from service
providers, employers still have a strong need for IT professionals who have
a combination of technical and business-related skills--such as business
and industry knowledge and project management and communications skills. In
addition, these IT executives expressed a concern that such individuals are
in short supply.

Overall, while very large organizations (more than $3 billion in revenue)
and medium-sized organizations ($500 million to $3 billion) are both
increasing the amount of work they send to service providers, companies
with less than $500 million in revenue are increasing their in-house IT
staffs more than increasing their outsourcing activities. Since such
businesses make up 99% of U.S. businesses (according to the U.S. Small
Business Administration in 2006), this is a significant source of jobs.

chart: Where the IT jobs are?
What this research and other projects that have been carried out are saying
is that the market for individuals with IT-related skills is growing. The
growth is in IT organizations within client companies that buy IT products
and sourcing services, and at IT service providers, domestically and
globally.

YOUTH MOVEMENT
The challenge is motivating and educating young emerging workers--as well
as their parents and career counselors--to recognize the IT career
potential so they'll seek IT-related positions.

The United States faces a challenge in the global economy. Many countries
in Asia and Europe are more successful at educating and training their
upcoming workforce in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)
skills that are being demanded by the marketplace and, as a result, are
competing with the United States in providing talent in the IT arena. In
math literacy, the United States ranked 24th out of 29 nations in the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Universities in the
United States should continue to augment these science, technology,
engineering, and math skills along with the skills being demanded by
employers--such as business, industry, communications--to ensure that these
candidates are prepared for the challenges and opportunities that await
them.

IT and innovation have kept the U.S. economy a leader in the global
marketplace. For that to continue, the key stakeholders in the United
States must work together to revitalize the appropriate pipeline of
candidates. Who are the key stakeholders? Private industry, educational
systems at all levels, and government agencies all have important roles to
play in solving the skills famine. It's imperative to reverse the negative
perceptions that students, parents, and guidance counselors have developed
because of the dot-com disaster and the subsequent inaccurate fear that all
technology-related jobs would move offshore. A basic grounding in science,
math, technology, business, and communications must be ensured beginning at
the K-12 level.

In the past, the United States inspired young people to get into STEM
education with a national vision: to put a man on the moon. This national
mandate worked beyond anyone's expectations and illustrates how a shared
vision can drive a desired outcome. We have no analogous vision today to
inspire the youth in the United States.

This is why all the stakeholders must work together to derive a plan to
inform students about the opportunities that a career in IT can have. A few
of the major players in the field, specifically IBM and Microsoft along
with SIM, are investing in programs to this end. They're working at the
high school and college levels to bring excitement into the process of
letting young people know about the IT opportunities. Some organizations
have begun mentoring programs in colleges, where senior IT professionals
work with students to generate enthusiasm.

chart: Projected increases between 2006 and 2016
These have been isolated efforts and there is a need to bring these
together, grow the programs, and reach out to more students and regions.
Government must also realize the impact of the shortage of IT skilled labor
and work toward providing incentives, supporting scholarships, and
broadcasting the need for people in IT-related careers. Government and
academia must commit to educating a new generation of mathematically,
scientifically, and business-adept Americans. Other government programs can
be directed at increasing funding for research and development and working
with the private sector and universities to increase the number of these
graduates.

The downward trend in American university students enrolling in computer
science and IT-related programs has leveled and is beginning to slowly
reverse. This is good news, but it's not happening quickly enough to
overcome the combination of the current thin pipeline and the impending
baby boomer retirement.

Increased sourcing to offshore locations is becoming a necessity for many
organizations as they fail to find the talent they need within the United
States. For this to movement change, the key stakeholders (i.e., business,
academia, vendors, government, and advisers) must begin active and
aggressive programs to bring people back into the IT career track. There is
a clearly a shortage of IT talent for the foreseeable future--unless we
make a concerted effort to work together to ensure that we quickly turn it
around.

-- with Rajkumar Kempaiah and Christine Bullen

Dr. Jerry Luftman is a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology,
where he's also executive director of Stevens' graduate information systems
programs. Before that, he spent 22 years with IBM. He's also a VP at the
Society for Information Management.

Illustration by Brian Stauffer


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http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205601558


Majority Of Staff And Managers See Some Sign Of IT Talent Shortage

But most of those only see it certain specialties or geographic areas.

By Chris Murphy,  InformationWeek
Jan. 12, 2008

There's a raw, emotional split in the IT community over whether there's
truly a U.S. shortage of tech talent. Some see the talent "shortage" as an
idea cooked up by management to justify more visas for low-wage foreign
workers. But our recent survey found something surprising: Business
technology managers and staffers hold very similar views on whether there's
a shortage. About two-thirds of both groups see some signs of a shortage.

The most prevalent view--by 45% of managers and 40% of staff--is that
there's a shortage only in certain IT specialties and some geographies.
Another quarter of staffers and 29% of managers see a shortage in many IT
areas, according to our survey of 893 managers and 270 staffers involved in
the IT hiring process. Twenty-three percent of managers and 29% of staffers
say there's no U.S. shortage.

InformationWeek Reports

IS THERE A TECH TALENT SHORTAGE?
Survey Results:
Is There A Tech Talent Shortage
Take Our Poll:
What's your take on the IT talent shortage?
Join the discussion in our forums
The question becomes volatile in the context of offshore outsourcing and
H-1B visas for foreign workers. Offshoring critics hear talk of a
shortage--or even just healthy employment--and they fear IT vendors will
use that as leverage to import more foreign workers into the United States.

2007 was indeed a very good year for IT job creation, according to the most
recent numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics--the best year ever, in
fact, in the seven years the bureau has been using its current IT job
categories to survey workers. The eight IT job segments added more than
300,000 jobs last year, with average quarterly employment topping 3.76
million last year, up from 3.46 million at the end of 2006. Quarterly
unemployment for those categories averaged 2% in 2007, exactly the same as
for the larger professional and management employment category. Software
engineers and computer scientists/system analysts make up 45% of the IT
workforce.

Still, IT pros remain unsure of the profession's future. Just 55% of
staffers who responded to our survey say they believe there are more career
opportunities today than when they entered the profession, while 59% of
managers think that's the case. Sixty percent of staffers and 62% of
managers believe the United States is losing its leadership position in IT.

Yet a healthy majority would recommend an IT career to a child or other
family member--74% of staffers and 71% of managers.

One 16-year IT veteran, a director supporting engineering applications at a
major electronics company, says IT's not much different from most career
choices--it depends on the company. A company that's growing, adding new
applications, and building new systems is going to provide an exciting
track for a young person starting a career. One in belt-tightening,
do-more-with-less mode will make it tough. He sees a talent shortage in his
specialized area, supporting highly technical engineering applications,
because it's hard to find experienced people either in the United States or
abroad, and it's not a growth area that attracts entry-level people. It's
"more of a quality shortage than in actual head count," he says.

chart: Is there a shortage of IT talent in the US today?
The IT pros we surveyed give U.S. colleges faint praise for preparing
students with the right skill sets. Just 9% say they do, 54% say they
"mostly" do but are lacking in some areas, while 37% say they're either
lacking in many areas or "not even close." Based on the number of survey
comments criticizing employer training, we also should have asked about
that. A typical comment, from a business continuity manager: "I have seen a
reluctance of IT shops to train or cross-train applicants or staff to fill
them. [The attitude of some companies is] if we can't find the perfect fit
employee, then we have an excuse to go offshore to fill the position."

U.S. IT workers are split evenly over the coming baby boomer retirement
wave, with managers slightly more worried than staff. Managers split
exactly 50-50, while 42% of staff expect a shortage. Says one survey
respondent: "Most of the retiring baby boomers are not really ready to
retire, so you will see about 40% of that workforce continue to work well
into their 70s ... at their office in their homes or in a nearby office."

There's plenty of uncertainty heading into 2008. Will healthy IT job growth
continue? If there's an economic slowdown, will IT be severely cut, as it
was during the last recession? One thing's likely: IT pros are likely to
remain sharply divided over the answers.

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