Tuesday, June 06, 2006

US High-End IT Job Losses Lower than Reported – Study

According to a study by the American Sentinel University, the chances of the US losing high-end IT jobs due to the fast development of IT and related industries in low-cost destinations such as India are much lesser than what was being reported by various private studies. IT offshoring is primarily limited to low-end occupations such as programmers, coders, and support specialists.

According to the study, high-end IT positions are growing at a pace which is at par with the levels experienced by the country during the boom period in the 1990s. A majority of the job losses that took place in the US during and after the recession period of 2000-01 were cyclical in nature and have been won back.
Though the low-end IT jobs have shown a marginal decline of 1.5 percent during the post-recession period of 2002-04, high-end IT jobs have shown a robust growth of 18.1 percent during the same period. Network system and data communication analysts lead the growth in the high-end IT group with a growth rate of 32.5 percent, followed by computer software engineers for systems software at 25.9 percent. The trend is supported by the fact that the total value of import of IT services in the US is less than 2.5 percent of software publishing and information services produced by the country.

The study titled, Offshoring of Information-Technology Jobs: Myths and Realities, defines low-end IT occupations as the jobs which are intensive, easy to codify, and require less face-to-face interaction. High-end IT jobs are the ones requiring advanced degrees in computer science or information systems and an understanding of management and business processes.

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