| April 2006 |
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| Dice job postings in Phoenix are up 20% |
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The Southwest is hot.
And the tech job market in the region is even hotter with six of the region’s metro areas landing in the top 20 of The Milken Institute Best Performing Cities Index.
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The Milken Index, a measurement of where jobs are being created in America, named Phoenix as one of its best-performing job markets for the second consecutive year.
Last year alone Arizona gained 97,200 jobs, an increase of 4.1 percent, according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security. The unemployment rate in Phoenix is hovering around 4 percent. The national unemployment average is 5 percent.
“The Southwest and especially Phoenix is seeing a huge surge in its tech labor needs,” said Scot Melland, CEO of Dice, the leading technology career site. “Many of the hiring companies and recruiting agencies who use Dice observe a tightening labor market, and salaries are starting to trend higher as a result.”
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| "The economic expansion has matured to the point where corporate America feels it's safe to staff up," |
| - Ken Mayland, Clear View Economics |
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Technology job listings on Dice increased 20 percent in Phoenix during a recent three-month period, from 1,140 in December to 1,269 in March. The most sought-after IT skills right now, according to Dice, include Oracle, SAP and Java.
"The economic expansion has matured to the point where corporate America feels it's safe to staff up," Ken Mayland, an economist at Clear View Economics, said.
While the average yearly salary for IT workers in Phoenix is $70,800, in the lower third of major metro markets in the Dice salary survey, modest costs and reasonable home prices more than make up for the few fewer dollars.
Ross DeVol, the Milken Institute’s director of Regional Economics and the report’s lead author, said the state was creating jobs at an impressive rate and he expected “good weather, low costs and a growing population” to continue the strong growth trend.
Another sure sign of continued job growth is when an industry giant opens shop in the region. Last year Google opened a 20-person office in the Phoenix area, and has plans to add between 200 and 300 employees, according to several reports.
This year alone should see the creation of 217,000 new tech jobs in the United States, according to Virendra Singh, a senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com. That would make 2006 the best year the industry has seen since it flattened toward the end of 2000.
Singh also expects the job-growth trend to remain steady through at least 2010, with an additional 126,000 tech jobs created in 2007 and 123,000 more in 2008.
“Things are looking very good all around,” Economy.com’s Singh said.
If you would like to be interviewed for the next Dice market report, or if you have comments about this article, please contact us at feedback@dice.com.
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| “Phoenix is seeing a huge surge in its tech labor needs,” |
| - Scot Melland, CEO of Dice.com |
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