Want to work at Starbucks? These days you're more likely to find a job as a barista than an IT expert at the company's Seattle headquarters.

The quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, which covers all industries, found that from January to March just 19 percent of the area companies interviewed plan to hire more employees, according to Jim Nelson, a Manpower spokesperson. In the tech sector, recruiter Robert Half Technology's IT Hiring Index indicates only 11 percent of area CIOs intend to hire new staff during the first quarter.

In 2007's fourth quarter, the number of Seattle-area IT job listings on Dice plunged 15 percent after a year of gains. (Seasonality may be at least partly to blame). Today about 2,200 jobs are listed, slightly more than there were a year earlier but disappointingly few compared to just a few months ago.

Seattle salaries have dropped a bit, as well. The new Dice salary survey shows the area's IT pay averaged $79,636, down 0.2 percent for the year but still ahead of the national average by $5,100.

The recently published 2008 Robert Half Technology Salary Guide sees above-average demand for Web developers, business intelligence analysts, and network security administrators in Seattle. Gary Coleman, branch manager of IT recruiter Sapphire Technologies' West Coast regional recruiting center, adds, "JAVA and .NET are always high on the list of hot skill sets in demand." What else is on the upswing? "We see a lot of requests for business analysts, project managers, and SQL Server DBAs."

Coleman describes the general tech sector as "a bit rocky," but notes decent activity in financial services and banking markets. "Though we expect to see a downturn in the economy - which will affect the amount of activity in the full-time market - we predict stable or even increased demand for contract IT positions. There is still work that needs to be done."

One thing to keep in mind: Washington's largest and fastest growing sector has long been, and still remains, software publishing, according to the electronics trade association AeA's 2007 CyberStates report. Washington ranks second in the country, behind California, in this regard. Internet services, engineering services, and computer systems design and related services are also on the upswing, AeA says. All of these are areas in which IT experts should focus their job search as the new year begins.