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Computerworld

Feds using musty numbers in IT jobs outlook


By David Weldon


02/28/2000 Congress is once again expected to take up the issue of raising
the cap on H-1B visas for foreign-national professionals this year. A
recent proposal would even increase the number from 115,000 to 190,000
annually, largely in response to projected job growth in the information
technology industry.


Unfortunately, Congress will once again debate the issue without having a
clue about what the IT population is. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
attempts to track such things. But it continues to use generic and outdated
job categories, and its published workforce numbers are generally 2 years
old, hardly of any use in an Internet-time economy.


Two recent studies claim to project technical job vacancy rates. But those
studies relied on the vendor and consulting segments of the industry, which
are minority segments and therefore don't truly reflect overall IT
employment trends.


So how many people work in IT right now, how many vacant jobs are there and
what will be needed in the near future? No one really knows. And we need to.


Consider a few factors that make the IT population such an elusive number:


College enrollments: Three years ago, a well-publicized study of college
enrollments (reported by the Information Technology Association of America)
in IT was released. The study, based on data which was then 2 years old,
cited a continual decline in college IT graduates. This study fueled a
great deal of alarm that we wouldn't be producing enough new technical
workers for years to come. Unfortunately, colleges and universities were
already reporting that their enrollment declines had leveled off or were on
the upswing, and by last year enrollments had doubled or tripled at most
leading IT programs. The anecdotal evidence, therefore, suggests we'll make
up for the previous enrollment decline in two years.


Job vacancies: During the past two years, a tremendous number of IT
professionals decided to heed the call of consulting and gave up the
full-time employee lifestyle. Fueling the migration were the
well-publicized salaries of skilled consultants and the tremendous need for
contractors and consultants to work on Y2k projects. Many companies lost
full-time staffers as a result and had to place contractors or consultants
in key positions, while job requisitions went unfilled. Despite the fact
that, in many cases, IT professionals were performing the tasks, they
weren't counted as employees, and the jobs were counted as unfilled for
months. Vacancy rates were often overinflated. Now, with Y2k a fleeting
memory, many of those contract workers are available for staff jobs again.


The new Net workforce: The explosion of Internet-related companies and jobs
can easily mislead the general public to assume we're becoming a totally
techie workforce. But many of these new jobs are held by people from non-IT
backgrounds. Nevertheless, for many companies, Internet-related jobs will
represent their greatest job growth for the next couple of years.


Obviously there are many conflicting issues at play here. But however you
view the worker shortage or skills gap projections, IT has become the
critical workforce in our economy. It's time Washington got a true handle
on the number of IT workers we have, and the number we'll need. It's too
important an issue to keep guessing at.


David Weldon is Computerworld's editor for IT Careers. Contact him at
david_weldon@computerworld.com.