Factors that affect employment

It jobs are now on high demand. However, because the term  ”IT jobs” is very general  which relates so many different occupations. To better picture the jobs future prospective, it is important to look specifically at the job you are interested in and be updated. Here is some information that may be useful for you.

Recent IT employment patterns have varied by occupation. This variation is a result of several factors, including demand for certain IT services, increasing efficiency in particular fields, and different susceptibilities to offshoring. For example, employment of database administrators, computer and information systems managers, and computer software engineers all grew by 22 percent or more between 2001 and 2007.

Computer scientists and systems analysts, network and computer systems administrators, and network and data communications analysts also saw employment growth, with increases between 8 and 16 percent over the same period. Employment in some occupations did fall, however. Computer programmers and computer support specialists, for example, both saw job losses of more than 6 percent. These two occupations are more susceptible to offshoring than other IT occupations, according to BLS, because their tasks are routine, can be done by telephone or over the Internet, require little interaction with other types of workers, and require little familiarity with the cultural practices of customers.

Although offshoring may have contributed to job losses in those occupations, it is likely that other factors also played a part in their employment declines. For example, some programming and support functions that were previously performed by IT workers have been automated. This automation has lowered demand for workers in these occupations, resulting in job losses. Apart from those two occupations, offshoring’s impact on technology jobs has probably been limited. A report by the Association for Computing Machinery states that in previous years, IT jobs in which workers need comparatively lower levels of skill—such as programmers and support specialists—were the primary focus of offshoring efforts; meanwhile, other occupations that require higher level skills were largely unaffected. Furthermore, the same factors that allow U.S. firms to move work to other countries allow foreign businesses to hire workers in the United States, thus creating jobs.

Source: http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/2009/spring/art04.pdf