IT Services Employment Reaches New High
|
Employment at IT services firms isn't booming but when compared with the rest of the country, it's showing some muscle. In fact, employment at IT services firms reached a new high last month. |
Why is employment at IT services firms at record levels when the overall economy is tanking? IT is so integral to business that the need to develop new and support existing systems don't disappear when the economy goes south. But in a weakened economy, businesses don't want to add to their payrolls, so they turn to IT services firms to provide the manpower on an as-needed basis.
And, IT continues to be a catalyst for productivity. Indeed, a brightspot in recent gloomy economic news is IT's role in the recent boost in personal productivity.
As overall nonfarm employers shed 49,000 jobs from their payrolls in May, IT services firms added a miniscule 200 jobs, according to the monthly employment report issued Friday by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That report showed that national unemployment jumped a half a percentage point to 5.5 percent. A year earlier, national jobless stood at 4.5 percent.
IT services firms, tagged computer systems design and related services by the government, employed 1,402,000 people in May. That's 48,600 jobs, or 3.6 percent, higher than a year earlier. [Industry figures for April and May are preliminary.]
Roughly one of five employed IT pros in the United States works for an IT services firm, according to a CIO Insight analysis of government labor statistics.
Not every person employed by IT services firms is an IT pro, but a majority are. A 2006 government report estimates that 53 percent of IT services firms' workers hold IT jobs such as programmers; software engineers; computer, network systems and data communications analysts; database, network and systems administrators. Another 3 percent are computer and IS managers. The remaining employees—44 percent of payrolls—encompass non-IT managers and administrative and operational support personnel, including those in finance, human resources and sales.
