Information Technology hiring demand is still declining, according to data gathered from WANTED Analytics 2.0. Overall hiring demand is down 38% compared to the same period last year. Last month, hiring demand was down only 30% on year-over-year basis.
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What's more, IT workers have been hit harder than the national average this month. Last month, both IT and National hiring demand was down 30%, year-over-year. This month, National hiring demand is down 32%, whereas IT is down 38%.
The number of new job ads is expected to continue to decline through the end of May, not only because of the downward trend for IT workers, but also because May has typically displayed a downward seasonal effect. The past three years, there has been an average drop of 18,000 new job ads during the last week of May.
We expect that June will show month-over-month increases in hiring demand, mostly again because of seasonal effects. However, we expect the overall downward trend to continue through at least June.
The only IT occupation to show year-over-year gains are "Computer and Information Scientists, Research", with 941 new job ads in April 2009 compared to 764 new job ads in April 2008. However, these workers represent less than 1% of all IT employment and recruitment has been highly targeted: most of the job ad volume gain has been on AfterCollege.com. This very small group of highly educated and highly specialized workers does not buck the overall trend.
The IT occupations that have shown the most resistance to the recession are "network" folks and system software engineers, as explained by last month's IT industry analysis.
Hiring demand for "Computer Software Engineers, Applications", one of the most important IT occupations based on total employment, is down 37.5% since last year. Last month, hiring demand for that occupation was down only 31%, year-over-year.
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