Here's the grimmest assessment of the Detroit IT labor market we've seen yet. In the Dice forums, "Mgirard" wrote: "Unless you have some kind of family or other obligations to stay, get out of Detroit before you are in a rut you can't dig yourself out of. The favorable cost of living is not commensurate with the ... salary, the stench of decline, and the sense that anyone with any brains or ambition is going or has gone elsewhere."

In IT specifically, things are just as discouraging. On Dice, the number of Detroit-area IT job listings fell 13 percent during the fourth quarter, to 1,062. The city begins 2008 with the same number of Dice job listings that it had in January 2007.

Recruiter Robert Half Technology's IT Hiring Index indicates just 13 percent of Detroit-area CIOs plan to hire new staff in the first quarter. Worse, the new Dice salary survey shows the Motor City has the lowest average IT salaries of any city Dice tracks. At $67,271, the average is up just 0.28 percent over 2007, and falls $7,000 short of the national average. (But keep in mind that Detroit's cost of living is relatively low).

For all that, IT is a relative bright spot in Detroit's employment landscape. According to one newspaper report, Flint - a center of auto manufacturing - had an unemployment rate above 8 percent for much of 2007. Ann Arbor, with the University of Michigan and several emerging high-tech and life science companies, had the state's lowest jobless rate at or below 5 percent.

Lindsey Paskvan, account manager of IT recruiter Sapphire Technologies' Detroit office, sees those numbers in action. "There are a lot of industries and companies that have bright futures," she says. "Specifically, the biotech, aerospace, e-learning, and retail industries are looking very promising. Many Detroit natives are moving to the Ann Arbor area to gain employment with some of the high-tech companies and retail organizations located there."

While demand for traditional technologies associated with the auto industry, such as CAD, has decreased, "it has not become extinct," Paskvan says. "Meanwhile, the technologies that are most desirable around the rest of the country, such as ERP, Web development with XML, .NET and Java, and systems administration with Windows and Unix, are always high priorities. A healthy demand still exists for IT professionals with these skills in the Detroit area."

Paskvan says over 25 percent of all the area positions that Sapphire worked on last year were classified as Web development, with Java/J2EE and .NET accounting for most of the listings. Another 20 percent were for general ERP consultants, with Oracle and SAP being most in demand.

Dice user Earl Carter has found his most recent Detroit IT success in healthcare. "I'd have to say this is the most promising area for IT work now. It is a constantly evolving and very competitive industry, and demand is great. I've seen openings for lead programmers/project managers with Java and Linux skills," he reports.
  
Some final hints from Detroit IT insiders: check job listings for Google, Quicken Loans and Pfizer - all of which have Detroit presences - and look into alternative energy technologies. The state government believes this is one area into which the auto industry can migrate as demand for its current products continues to dwindle.