"The Greater Philadelphia economy is very diverse, but there are a few industries that tend to drive the IT marketplace, including banking, insurance, telecom, cable, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals." That's the analysis of Joseph Santora, regional manager for IT recruiter Sapphire Technologies. He's "optimistic about the marketplace for IT professionals in 2008."

The quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, which covers all industries, agrees. It found that from January to March 2008, an impressive 46 percent of the companies interviewed plan to hire more employees, according to a spokesperson, Andrew Doline. When it comes to IT-specific hiring, recruiter Robert Half Technology's IT Hiring Index indicates 15 percent of Philadelphia-area CIOs plan to hire new staff in the first quarter, a relatively strong number.

On Dice, the fourth quarter was slow. The number of Philadelphia IT job listings dropped 11 percent, to 2,884, about 300 fewer listings than were available a year earlier. However, salaries are heading in the right direction. According to the new Dice salary survey, the average Philadelphia IT job pays $74,442, up 2.3 percent over the previous year, and right at the national average.

According to Sapphire's Santora, "We're seeing requests for skills from across the board. We've always seen a high demand for network and infrastructure engineers, quality assurance engineers and testers, software developers, project managers and business analysts. More recently, we've seen an increase in requests for candidates with strong security experience and certifications. The ERP space has reemerged recently, as well, specifically in the SAP and PeopleSoft arenas."

Some of Philadelphia's biggest employers include Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems & Solutions, Verizon Pennsylvania and Unisys Corp. A quick search of their career pages isn't encouraging, though, at least at the moment. At Lockheed, only two IT positions are currently available, one for a computer support tech and one for a senior network data communications analyst. Unisys has seven listings, including slots for a .NET specialist and a network security engineer.

The city is doing what it can to earn a better reputation as a tech center, a logical step given the region's 80 colleges and universities. The University City Science Center, a tech company incubator headquartered in 14 buildings totaling 2 million square feet, has just hired a new chief executive, Stephen Tang, to help spur the development of tech-centric businesses. "There has been an awakening, a tremendous amount of support," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "They seem to be ready to step forward boldly for promoting the region's economy." The big goal: to turn research into businesses in order to create good technology jobs. Philadelphia will need more of them if it hopes to compete with other northeast tech centers such as Boston and New York.