Payrolls at IT services firms grew by 4.4% in the past year, faster than the overall economy. But other IT industries didn't fare as well, the government reports.
May 6, 2005
IT services firms continue to be hanging out the help-wanted signs. But other segments of the IT sector--hardware vendors and a category that includes software developers, Internet service providers, and search portals--aren't doing as well, according to the April employment report issued Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Count 1,100 new jobs within the IT services sector--known in government vernacular as computer systems design and related services--toward the 274,000 new nonfarm jobs created in the United States last month. The government estimates that IT services firms employ nearly 1.18 million Americans; that's 4.4% more than a year earlier.
IT services is part of a subcategory the government calls professional and technical services, which includes firms that dispense accounting, architectural, engineering, legal, management, and non-IT technical advice and services. As a comparison, professional and technical services--excluding its IT component--saw employment increase by 3% this past year. Overall nonfarm employment in the United States rose 1.7% in a year.
Manufacturers of computer and peripheral equipment added only 900 jobs in April, bringing that workforce to 212,100, up a fraction of a percentage point from a year earlier. The sector called ISPs, search portals, and data processing--which includes software vendors--lost 800 jobs last month, falling to 392,000. But it still employs 4,800 more workers than it did in April 2004, a 1.2% gain. All figures are seasonally adjusted, and those for March and April are preliminary.
Economist James Forcier, managing director of economic advisers Bay Analytics, says he's not surprised that IT services firms have seen an increase in employment as many companies that resist hiring permanent workers turn to computer system design and related companies to help modernize their systems and networks. "There continues to be a nervousness out there, and many employers are reluctant to walk too far in any one direction without having a clear signal of where the economy is going," he says. "In terms of employment figures, I still see the long-term prognosis as favorable."
To determine employment levels, Labor Statistics each month samples about 160,000 businesses and government agencies that cover some 400,000 work-sites. The employment numbers reflect all jobs at these surveyed firms, so positions counted at an IT consulting firm, for instance, would include nontechnical ones such as marketing and finance.
Employment data on specific occupations, such as programmers and analysts, are found in another survey of 60,000 households, the one used to produce the monthly unemployment rate. But the government doesn't release monthly statistics on specific professions because it deems the sample size for each occupation as too small to be reliable. Labor Statistics does make available quarterly reports based on its household surveys, which InformationWeek analyzes to determine an IT unemployment rate. For the 12 months ended in March, the IT unemployment rate stood at 3.7%.
Email This Page!