1. Overall size, geographical distribution and organizational distribution of the IT workforce;
2. The number of IT workers hired and let go in the past 12 months;
3. Predicted demand over the coming twelve months as well as anticipated gap between supply and demand;
4. Skill development techniques as outlined by hiring managers;
5. Best methods of retaining IT workers; and
6. Relevance of knowledge of information security for IT workers

The study also introduces an important addition to the depth of ITAA’s IT workforce research, the ITAA/Dice Tech Skills Profile. This profile reveals the top IT skills needed to obtain a variety of information technology jobs, according to data collected in April 2002 from Dice, Inc., a leading provider of online recruiting services for technology professionals. The ITAA/Dice Tech Skills Profile will be updated quarterly to track overall employment, as well as hot skills by job category and region.

In order to ensure consistency of data and survey methodology, ITAA again commissioned the market research firm Market Decisions Corporation of Portland, Oregon, www.mdcresearch.com, to conduct the survey, including administering the questionnaire, data collection, tabulation and reporting. Results are based on telephone interviews with 532 hiring managers from IT and non-IT companies. The sample is projectable to all U.S. companies greater than 50 employees. Results have sampling variability of +/- 3.6% at the 90% confidence level.

This study is made possible through the support of its sponsors: American Association of Community Colleges, Brainbench, The Chubb Institute, Cisco Systems, Dice Inc., Intel, ITT Technical Institute, Microsoft, ProsoftTraining and SRA International. Sponsors helped develop the survey questionnaire and overall goals of the research.

Top Study Findings:

The IT Workforce in 2001

• The 10.4 million-member IT workforce that ITAA measured in 2001 fell by 5% to 9.9 million workers in early 2002. In aggregate terms the U.S. IT workforce experienced a net loss of 528,496 workers over a 12-month period. Companies hired 2.1 million IT workers during the year, but also dismissed 2.6 million IT workers.
  
  
• IT firms lost 15% of IT workers, while non-IT companies dropped 4% during the same period.
  
  
• Reductions were spread evenly across the United States, with all regions of the country losing five percent of their IT workforce, however, the South led in reductions as a percentage of the total, with 34%, or 181,928 IT workers lost. The South also has the largest number of IT workers, home to 3,406,519 of them.
  
  
• Ninety-two percent of IT workers work for non-IT companies.
  
  
• Software programmers and engineers are the single largest category of IT worker, constituting almost 21% of the total workforce, and the United States is home to 2,039,880 programmers. However, it was technical support workers who were most likely to be let go within the last year.
  

• Companies are optimistic about future hirings over the next twelve months. They project an aggregate demand for IT workers of 1,148,639 in 2002, of which they expect 578,711 positions to go unfilled due to a lack of qualified workers, referred to as the "gap" in IT workers. While demand is up 27% over 2001, it is only 71% of the level measured in 2000. Over the three years demand and gap have been counted by ITAA, gap remains consistently around 50% of total demand.
  
  
• Demand for IT workers in the Midwest and the West is down significantly between 2000 and 2002, with the Midwest experiencing an 68% drop and the West down 71% over the two years.
  
  
• As a means to cope for the lack of skilled workers, outsourcing continues to grow in popularity among non-IT companies, who cite an increase in outsourcing of 17% over 2001.
  
  

• As in 2001, previous experience in a job is the single most important skill credential for obtaining a new job in each of the NWCET job categories. Informal training is now on par with a four-year college degree as the best way to obtain needed skills.
  
  
• Overall, certification has grown in significance for each of the job categories, while general job experience has declined in importance as an entry-level skill credential.
  
  
• Four-year college was particularly important for database developers, programmers and software engineers, enterprise systems integrators, and technical writers.
  
  

• Companies this year believe that an average acceptable time to retain their IT workers is just slightly over 2 years. And they retain 84% of their IT workers for this length of time or longer. It could be that hiring managers have adjusted their outlook to better reflect reality in this market. Last year, they said acceptable tenure was 33 months on average, but they retained a lower percentage, 78%, for this length of time. Non-IT companies in particular have significantly reduced their expectations for employees’ length of stay in jobs, from three years to less than two as an acceptable period with the company.
  
  
• Hiring managers believe that IT workers in all job categories have the same primary retention incentive: money. Respondents rated a good overall compensation plan more often than any other benefit (43 percent).
  
  
• Database developers and administrators seem to be short-timers in IT positions, with hiring managers expecting them to stay put for an average of 10 months. Non-IT firms had even lower expectations at a mere eight months for database gurus. Programmers and technical writers are the relative mainstays of the IT workforce, with average expected tenures of 33 months each.
  
  

• Information security issues were deemed most essential for the position of network design and administration, which scored 8.1 on a nine point scale. The professionals making the connections for a system are clearly the most important line of defense against attacks. Enterprise systems engineers and database administrators followed, ranking 7.7 and 7.4 respectively. Predictably, the positions where information security was least significant were Technical Writing and Digital Media.
  
  
• For security professionals the most fertile ground for job seeking is large (1,000 or more employees) IT companies, which average 36.3 positions per firm, more than four times the security workers in similar-sized non-IT companies.
  
  

• C++, followed by Oracle, SQL, Java and Windows NT are the hottest, most in demand IT skills as determined by the new ITAA / Dice Tech Skills Profile.
  
  Change and volatility continue in the U.S. IT job market, as documented by the ITAA studies in previous years, and again this year with the release of Bouncing Back.
  

ITAA remains committed to helping stakeholders identify hiring, reductions, demand and gap patterns, as well as the bigger picture of ensuring a strong, full pipeline of future skilled IT workers to lead the U.S. into the next technology revolution.