More Good News for Some – But Not All – Tech Jobs

Unemployment rates for information technology professionals dropped sharply in the second quarter of 2012 and continue remain less than half of the national average, though not for all tech professions.

Dice.com’s Tech Trends Snapshot found that unemployment rates among IT workers dropped to 3.6 percent in the second quarter of 2012, down from 4.4 percent in the first quarter. That’s less than half of the national unemployment average of 8.2 percent, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Web developers, network architects, computer systems analysts, software developers, network and systems administrators, and programmers all saw drops in their employment rates from the first quarter, Dice found. At the same time, rising unemployment was seen in other professions, such as computer support specialists (8.2 percent from 7.1 percent) and database administrators (5.7 percent from 5.2 percent).

Technology consulting has experienced the biggest boom so far this year, adding 18,300 positions in the second quarter for a total of 37,000 jobs for the first half of 2012. Data processing and hosting, however, lost 400 jobs, Dice found.

Fewer employees in the professional and business services are leaving their jobs than before the economic downturn, as concerns around economic growth and the uncertainty with the European situation may be causing many employees to stay put. Dice’s latest hiring survey found that just 37 percent of corporate hiring managers say voluntary departures have increased in their tech departments thus far in 2012.