High-tech hiring boom seen- National Survey says all jobs won’t be filled

After a year of massive layoffs and the loss of more than half a million technology jobs nationwide, the managers
who hire technology workers predict so much hiring in 2002 that they won’t be able to fill all the jobs.

By Margaret Steen
Mercury News

A survey released today by the Information Technology Association of America shows that the number of technology
jobs in the United States fell from 10.4 million in 2001 to 9.9 million in early 2002, about a 5 percent drop.

Beneath those numbers is evidence of even greater turmoil in the job market: The overall job loss came from
companies eliminating 2.6 million positions while hiring 2.1 million workers. The survey also found that demand for
IT workers in the West has fallen 71 percent since 2000, suggesting that local workers’ situation may be worse than
the nationwide picture.

But for 2002, hiring managers at both high-tech and non-tech companies said they expect to have more than 1.1
million technology jobs available. And they predict they won’t be able to fill almost 600,000 of those jobs because they
won’t be able to find qualified applicants.

This may come as a surprising finding to the more than 70,000 unemployed workers in Santa Clara County, many of
whom are from the technology industry. But Harris Miller president of the ITAA, said the survey is for the entire country,
not just Silicon Valley, and it looks forward rather than reflecting the current situation.

Technology jobs in Silicon Valley are heavily concentrated at technology companies. But in many other parts of the
country, the bulk of the technology jobs involve running computer systems for non-tech industries — some of which
haven’t been hit as hard by the recession.

“When the economy comes back, the jobs may be with an IT services firm on the East Coast or a bank in Chicago,”
Miller said. “If someone says, `I want to stay in Silicon Valley and work for a dot-com,’ they might be waiting a long
time.”

The survey is only as accurate as the predictions of the managers who answered the questions. And those
managers are optimistic. Of course, this doesn’t guarantee that their predictions will come to pass; a similar survey
last January predicted that more than 400,000 technology jobs nationwide would go unfilled in 2001.

“They were all fairly optimistic 14 months ago,” said Miller, although that optimism turned out to be misplaced.
“What we’re finding is that they’re optimistic again.”

One worker who bought into the bullish feeling last year was Bruce Arnot, co-principal of Skye Construction
Consulting in San Rafael.

Arnot wanted to move into technology, preferably a full-time job with a high-tech company in Silicon Valley. He started
taking e-commerce courses through UC-Berkeley Extension. But just as he started inquiring about jobs, the layoffs
started. Arnot decided to use his newly acquired technology skills as a consultant to construction companies.

“With all this lack of stability, it just seemed safer to me,” Arnot said. He still hopes to make his way into a job with a
high-tech company, but he wants to gain experience and wait out the recession first. “There will be more jobs to
come. It’s just a matter of timing.”

So will Silicon Valley job-hunters benefit from the competition for skilled workers that the hiring managers predict?

Bob Lee, CEO of Manpower Staffing Services/California Peninsula in San Jose, said he thinks hiring will pick up
quickly once demand for technology products picks up, but it’s not clear how soon that will be.

“A lot of good people with a lot of good talent are on the street,” Lee said. “When things pick up those people will be
hired back. I think the crunch is going to come when we’ve hired the people with competent skill sets back again.”

Many workers who have been laid off will likely be rehired, but Miller said the changing demands of the technology
industry, along with some job seekers’ high salary expectations and unwillingness to relocate, may be obstacles for
others.

In addition, managers at technology companies said almost half of their positions would likely be for mid-level
candidates; non-tech companies were more likely to be looking for entry-level and senior candidates. This could
make the job market more difficult for entry-level and more experienced workers in Silicon Valley.

The study by the ITAA, a national association of high-tech employers, was sponsored by a number of groups and
companies, including the American Association of Community Colleges, Cisco Systems, Intel and Microsoft. It was
based on a telephone survey in February and March of 532 randomly selected managers at U.S. companies with
more than 50 employees.

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/business/3206736.htm