IT's Ups and Downs in 2007
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2007 was a great year for the IT sector; 2007 was a terrible year for the IT sector. |
For the past 12 months through last month, employment at IT services firms rose by 5.2 percent to nearly 1.38 million workers, according the the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2007 will be the fourth straight year of employment growth within the IT services sector. Attribute the growth, in part, to more companies outsourcing IT operations as well as the need of end-user organizations to retain professionals with specialized skills to create new systems.
A look at government employment data for computer and peripheral makers tells a different tale, one of an industry that continues to shrink.The number of people employed in the U.S. in manufacturing PCs, servers and other computer hardware dipped below 200,000 in the past 12 months, a drop of 1.8 percent. Employment among computer makers in the U.S. has fallen every year since 1998. But the decline is slowing and has been since 2002, the year after the last recession and the dot-com bubble burst. Still, employment among IT manufacturers at just under 197,000 is more than 60 percent of what it was in the first half of 1998, when it peaked at some 323,000 workers.
Perhaps the weakening dollar that makes made-in-America wares cheaper abroad will provide some heft to U.S. computer makers.
