Judge for yourself if things are looking up.¹ DICE changed their digest algorithm to more accurately reflect new postings vs. repostings in early November 2003, hence the discontinuity. However, the numbers are still useful in showing trends. As one might expect, this includes a decline at the end of 2003 and an IBM assisted surge in early 2004. There's more information under the graph so please scroll down.

According to an article in the IEEE NJ Newsletter April 2003, (PACE News) referencing http://www.nomoreh1b.com, more than 220,000 workers are unemployed while more than 140,000 foreign workers are employed in NJ under the H-1B legislation. The IEEE page (freely available to the public) has a comprehensive list of representatives and others that they would like you to contact.

Another fierce source of competition is Indian outsourcers and developers. CMMI and ISO 9000 certified, they can produce high quality systems on time and on budget. However there may also be technological ways to compete. See 001experts for a nascent approach to fostering the use of a mature technology to compete. A number of us have used it with great success in industries such as aerospace, financial services and manufacturing, and would like to do so again.

According to a recent (April 7, 2003) article in Infomation Week "Spending On I.T. Salaries Up", a Meta survey showed that their IT workers will get bigger raises than other workers. In a related story in the previous issue, they quoted an ITAA survey that showed there were "10.2 million IT workers in the US at the end of 2002."  5% of that is 500,000 unemployed which means almost ½ of the unemployed are in New Jersey. However they are also forecasting a demand (nationwide) for 870,000 new IT workers. Let's hope a substantial number of these will be in the tri-state area!

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