Communications of the ACM
IT Employment is Still Soaring, and So are Bonuses
With unemployment in the IT industry at historically low levels, companies are increasing their payments of bonuses as they scramble to fill open positions and retain their best workers. Bonus payouts throughout the industry averaged $8,769 last year, and it's likely that bonuses will climb even higher this year. IT workers in Silicon Valley already do better than the rest of the United States, with annual bonuses averaging just under $12,500, according to a survey by Dice. Across the nation, approximately one in three IT workers can expect to receive a bonus this year, and those that do not may decide to jump ship and find a higher-paying job elsewhere.
Hiring in IT has been remarkably strong, even as the rest of the economy struggles to keep unemployment under 8%. At the beginning of November, Dice listed 86,731 job postings in IT, compared to 81,680 a year ago. Listings for nearly every month of the last 12 months have been for 80,000 or more jobs. Those aren't all new positions — with tech unemployment so low, it's likely employers are taking a significant amount of time to fill vacant slots. The Dice survey highlights another important tech employment trend: the growth of contract positions. Of the jobs listed for November, 52,870 are full-time, permanent positions, while 37,169 are contract jobs. More than 17,000 jobs were added in technology consulting during the third quarter of 2012. Through September, that category has had more than 56,000 new positions.
What are employers seeking in their tech openings? Open source programming skills are greatly desired. Python and Ruby have hit all-time peaks in six of the 10 months in 2012. JBoss is also on the list with nearly 2,000 job postings on any given day, up 10% year over year. Linux job postings reached their highest levels yet this month with 12,110. Job listings for programmers who can develop for Android are up about one-third since last year, and jobs related to virtualization are up like never before. In fact, mobile skills as a whole are in high demand. But few, if any, areas are as hot as the cloud. As of August, there were 10,771 jobs in six categories that are cloud-related, compared to 8,217 the year before, an increase of 31%.
From InfoWorld
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