| October 2006 |
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| Fourth-quarter IT hiring projections are highest in the nation |
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| As the fourth smartest (according to the Census Bureau) and 14th most wired (according to Forbes.com) city in America, Washington, D.C. sounds like a good place for tech experts to put down roots.
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Mineto Kariya, a programmer for financial systems, recently relocated from New York City to Washington and has found the job market is less cyclical than the Big Apple or Seattle. "Actually, this is one reason I wanted to move down here," he said. "My impression is that the tons of government agencies and defense jobs cushion the cyclical nature of the usual IT arenas. For me, finding a contracting gig was ridiculously quick and easy. I don't think an IT expert will need any advice from me to find a contract here. But finding a full time position is a bit more difficult and time-consuming. It helps if you have an angle in addition to being a pure IT person. For example, since my background has been mostly as a programmer for financial firms, that's how I sold myself."
Kariya added that the whole region seems vibrant. "Northern Virginia seems to be attracting a lot of IT jobs, and the northwestern suburbs of D.C. are getting lots of biotech firms. The area is doing something right in building the economy." But, he said, one result is that "the traffic is terrible."
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| A remarkable 45% of Washington-area companies plan to hire more employees in the fourth quarter. |
| - The quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey |
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Jobs should be very much available for the rest of this year. One indicator comes from IT staffing consultancy Robert Half Technology, whose fourth-quarter IT Hiring Index finds that a net 20% of Washington CIOs plan to make new hires this quarter. That's the best result for any major metro area and a very positive sign for the local IT job market.
The quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey echoes the sentiment. It calculates that a remarkable 45% of Washington-area companies plan to hire more employees in the fourth quarter. "Washington employers have much stronger hiring intentions than in the third quarter, when 22% of the companies interviewed intended to add staff,” said Manpower spokesman Charles Ray. "And employers have more positive hiring intentions than they did a year ago, when 31% of companies surveyed thought employment increases were likely."
The Hudson Employment Index, a measure of local worker confidence and optimism, has also soared recently, up to its all-time high and outstripping all of the other ten markets that the Index measures. Washington, D.C. is up 25% over the past year.
As for Dice's job listings for Washington, the numbers are steady for the quarter and for the year overall, with 7,675 IT jobs currently listed. Job seekers should pay special attention to timing the local employment market just right. Governmental budget cycles can have a marked effect on contracts and hiring.
"There's a lot going on in Washington and northern Virginia these days," said Scot Melland, CEO of Dice. “Government work and homeland security contracts are keeping people busy, and that's not even taking the private sector into account."
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