Online job listings for technology workers are down sharply, but there are still plenty of openings for people with the right skills, or for those living in the right metropolitan area.
The online job site Dice said the number of tech jobs advertised on its Web site has declined 26% from one year ago. The Conference Board, which publishes the widely watched consumer confidence index,Thursday reported that the number of computer-related jobs posted online declined about 29,000 from year-to-year, or about 5 percent. It gathers its data from 1,200 job sites.
Despite the advertising decline, Dice still had nearly 68,000 help wanted ads posted Wednesday, and the Conference Board said it counted more than 569,000 computer and mathematical related job ads in November.
The right stuff
Tom Silver , senior vice president of marketing and customer support at Dice Holdings Inc., said workers with skills in the right areas remain in demand. Job postings related to virtualization technology were up 19% year-over-year, he said. There were about 1,500 virtualization-related jobs on Dice Wednesday.
Virtualization is often cited as a cost cutting tool, allowing companies to consolidate physical servers and cut hardware, energy and administrative costs.
Another strong area for work is customer-relationship management (CRM), particularly with Siebel CRM software. A search on the word Siebel produced more than 2,000 results on Dice. Silver said he believes the reason why CRM skills are in demand is because companies are trying to preserve their customer base and want to get more use out of their CRM installations.
"It is far less expensive to keep an existing customer than it is to go out and find a new one," Silver said.
Location, location, location
For best places to find work, Washington may top the list. There are now 8,400 job ads listed on Dice in the capital's metro area, a 6% increase from a year ago, said Silver. A lot of that is federal government work, which often requires a security clearance.
But you may not have to travel to a big metro area to get work. Some smaller markets are seeing increases in job ads: Cleveland has 630 IT job openings, up 3% year-to-year; Cincinnati, 640 ads, up 5%; and Miami is up a whopping 20% with 700 job openings, said Silver.
Trouble at the top
IT management jobs may be the most difficult to find, according to The Conference Board. The number of job ads for managers declined 121,000 from a year ago, or about 18 percent. The board counted 516,000 management jobs last month.
June Schelp, an economist at the Conference Board, said the nose-dive in management jobs reflected the financial meltdown.
There were 4.37 million total jobs posted online last month for all occupations, a decline of 70,200 from October.
"Even in a bad economic situation, people still need people to work," Schelp said.
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