Bad news for IT profession in latest BLS data according to Janco

Oct. 24, 2010 - PRLog -- Park City, UT – Janco finds bad news for IT professionals in the latest The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data.  The job market for IT professionals, though better than the rest of the employment market, still continues to be sluggish. The BLS data shows a drop (0.66%) in the total employment of IT professionals from a year ago.  The areas were there has been the greatest shrinkage are telecommunications (-5.43%) and data processing services (-2.52%).  Both of these sectors continue to be adversely impacted by outsourcing.

There has been a slight increase in employment numbers in system design (5.51%) and IT services (2.33%). This has not been enough to absorb the displaced employees from prior periods nor address the issue of recent entrants into the IT job market who cannot find work.  

When Janco compared the total employment picture of the 3rd quarter of this year to the 2nd quarter, they found that the job market has deteriorated over the summer.  In subsequent follow-up interviews, with CIOs and CEOs at a number of large firms, the consensus is that the recession is not over and that budgets for 2011, which had assumed a marked improvement in the economic climate, will need to be revisited and possibly reduced.

The Mid-Year 2010 IT Salary Survey, which was released by Janco Associates in July, shows that hiring did pick up in some sectors of the IT job market, salaries had stopped falling, and for selected positions there has been an increase in compensation - especially for CIOs.  The CEO of Janco, Victor Janulaitis stated, “Many now fear a second dip in the economy and are much more cautious and concerned that the recovery will not be strong enough to support increased IT spending.”  

Summary Janco 12 month comparisons show the mean compensation (which includes bonuses) for all IT executive positions in large enterprises surveyed is $143,378 (a slight increase from $142,753) and $125,079 (a slight decrease from $126,031) in mid-sized enterprises. Overall compensation for all IT Professionals has shown a slight increase from $77,690 to $78,210; however the study shows that there was a 13% decrease in the number of employees receiving personal performance bonuses and a 7% decrease in those receiving enterprise based performance bonuses.  Mr. Janulaitis said, “Bonuses are trailing indicators and should return as soon as the recovery takes hold.”

Janco now is finalizing its data collection for their next salary survey which is due to be published in January.  Janco has captured IT compensation data since 1996 and publishes its IT Salary Survey semi-annually.  The IT Salary Survey is based on Janco’s IT professionals’ compensation database.  Compensation benchmark hiring and salary ranges are established for each position surveyed.  In analyzing the study data, the upper and lower quartiles are eliminated to determine the benchmark ranges.  The benchmark ranges are then used to assess the alignment of a company's actual compensation to the marketplace for each job function. A summary of the most recent salary survey can be downloaded by visiting Janco IT Salary Survey at http://ww.e-janco.com/Salary.htm.

# # #

Janco is a Mountain States based consulting firm that publishes the IT Salary Survey, Browser Market Data, and the IT Infrastructure HandiGuide® series of books used by IT, finance, human resources and other professionals as the source of information on topics from policies and procedures, to job descriptions and responsibilities.