IT Unemployment Remains Low

IT workers continued to experience lower unemployment rates than the general labor force in 1Q:09. While the overall unemployment rate was 8.4%, it was less for most IT occupations. And the unemployment rate was significantly lower—about half the national rate—for several skilled IT and computer jobs, such as computer and information systems managers, computer software engineers, and database administrators.

Hourly wage raises in most IT/high-tech sectors continued to be higher than the national average, which was up 3.3% in the past year. National weekly paychecks rose only 1.4% on average because hours have been reduced. However, hourly wage increases for IT professionals were often lower than the national average probably because they start from a higher wage base.

For example, workers in custom computer programming services experienced an essentially flat change in their hourly wages at a meager 0.3% increase in the past year. Offshore, low-cost programming centers may be suppressing domestic pricing of these services and related wages.

However, at least two IT/high-tech sectors experienced hourly and weekly hourly wage increases at rates higher than the national average. Workers at Internet publishing and broadcasting and Web search portals saw their hourly wages increase 4.3% and their weekly paychecks grow by 6.6% because they were putting in more hours. And although IT professionals in computer systems design services benefited from a 3.7% hourly raise, their weekly paychecks only grew by 1.1% because their hours were cut by 2.5%, which is one hour less from a 40-hour workweek.