IT Pay for Temporary Workers Rebounds
Certain IT skills are fueling a spike in demand for temporary tech workers,which is also helping to stabilize stagnating IT pay.
Demand for highly skilled temporary IT workers increased in the first quarter of 2011, according to staffing firm Yoh, as companies seek contractors to complete IT projects while keeping their labor costs in check. This is the second consecutive quarter that's shown increased demand for contract IT staff.
Corporations' growing need for temporary IT workers is having a positive impact on their pay. Yoh's research also indicates that wages for contract IT staff are beginning to creep up.
"First quarter results confirmed our Q4 report that the bottom may have been reached [for IT pay], and wages for this vital component of the American employment market are strengthening, ever so slightly, as industry stabilizes and American employers search for ways to post gains in a recovering economy," said Yoh President Lori Schutlz in a press release.
Yoh notes that application development projects, corporate interest in cloud computing, and ERP initiatives are fueling companies' requirements for temporary tech workers. Consequently, application developers and IT professionals with ERP and cloud expertise are best positioned to capitalize off of these wage and employment trends.
"Cloud computing and web application development are for real, as seen in increased demand for these technicians across the country," said Schultz in the statement. "While far from frothy, the demand in these areas is one factor that is stabilizing falling wages and providing for more consistent future employment markets."
IT professionals with ERP experience are sought after because many enterprises remain reluctant to move higher risk, back office systems to the cloud, notes Yoh.
Increased merger and acquisition activity is another factor stimulating demand for temporary tech workers, according to the staffing company. Organizations that may be targets for mergers or acquisitions often seek out temporary staffing help because it allows them to move projects forward without adding long-term employment obligations to their bottom line, Yoh notes. Such temporary staffing strategies are key because lower labor costs make the target company attractive to buyers, yet if a deal doesn't materialize, the target company has been able to keep key projects moving forward, adds Yoh.
Interestingly, the heating up of the contract IT labor market is causing some IT professionals to rethink their careers. "For the first time in years, we are seeing a willingness of some full-time employees to shift to the temporary market as a strategy to improve career and income prospects," Schultz noted in the press release. "As other workers see this success, it is likely to begin a domino effect of wage acceleration."
Have you given up a full-time IT job to strike out on your own? If so, e-mail me at mlevinsonatciodotcom. I'd like to hear your story.
Previous Post: Which Comes First: The Pursuit of Happiness or Success?Next Post: Does Your IT Resume Need an Extreme Makeover?
What is Tech Briefcase?
TechBriefcase is a new, free service where IT Professionals can Search, Store and Share IT white papers and content like this. Learn more
Bookmark content
Speed up your research efforts with content across the web.
Search and Store
Find the white papers you need. Create folders for any topic.
View Anywhere
Open your briefcase on your iPhone, tablet or desktop. Share with colleagues.
Most Discussed Posts
Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most significant game changers to hit the technology landscape in the past 20 years. With this massive expansion of the cloud, the perception of the IT organization is shifting from a utility player to a change agent. This eBook breaks down five ways progressive organizations are using cloud-based IT Management solutions to help drive innovation and become more strategic, including: adding visibility and analytics, speeding up time-to-value, lowering costs, improving prioritization, and providing a blueprint for future cloud deployments.
Read the white paper to see how IBM helped Citigroup deliver new services and enhancements to their 200 million customers faster.
There are 3 ways to modernize legacy applications: rewrite completely, acquire packaged solutions or migrate existing code. This paper explains why it's best to migrate and how IBM® Rational® software can help.
Accommodating specific lines of business can result in a hybrid ecosystem of applications and servers. The resulting complexity of this architecture makes for an environment that is costly to maintain and difficult to change when addressing new challenges.
This whitepaper will help you to define a mobile device passcode policy. Security managers must attempt to reconcile two opposing goals. They must: 1) create a passcode policy that is strong enough to protect the device if it is lost or stolen, while: 2) not annoying users with needless length or complexity.
This whitepaper, authored by The Radicati Group, looks at the key reasons organizations should consider moving to a cloud-based archiving solution. Email archiving solutions enable organizations to store, monitor, and collect electronic data exchanged by their users to comply with internal policies and regulations.
ATERNITY will showcase a 30-minute demo on how Fortune 500 companies are leveraging its award-winning FPI Platform to deliver a user-centric approach to Proactive IT Management.
For businesses to move forward and tap into the ever-expanding universe of Internet users and network-enabled devices, it's critical to learn how to make the transition to IPv6. Learn the critical steps your organization must take to make a seamless transition-and keep your business world connected.
Learn how IT teams can protect against spear phishing tactics. Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer of Bit9 offers a frank discussion about spear phishing - the most common technique used in today's advanced attacks.
Learn how to build a solid business case for your migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux so you can run leaner, innovate faster, be more flexible and own the New Now.
Social media isn't about you; it's about everything around you. As you consider how your customers want to communicate with you, social media is something that can't be ignored. But what should your strategy be? Is social media "just another channel?" What kind of a plan makes sense for your contact center and for your customers? Join our experts as they share their insight and research results.
Hardware tokens were a popular method of strong authentication in past years but the cumbersome provisioning and distribution tasks, high support requirements and replacement costs have limited their growth. The additional log-in steps that hardware tokens require and the resulting user frustrations have limited adoption and make them impractical for larger scale partner and customer applications.
Sponsored Links
