It could turn out the future of healthy high-tech in the Boston area depends on a new highway junction. Last month, Gov. Deval Patrick put forth a proposal to create a new I-93 interchange in Andover that would help three tech companies, including giant Wyeth BioPharma, to expand their operations. The Merrimack Valley Economic Development Council says 155 technology firms employ more than 23,000 workers in the area, which lies 20 miles north of the Hub.

While it's good to know the long term holds the promise of job growth, the more immediate future is looking pretty good, too. IT staffing consultancy Robert Half Technology's fourth-quarter IT Hiring Index finds that 12 percent of Boston CIOs plan to make new hires this quarter.

"The IT employment environment in Boston remains strong. Many large-scale IT initiatives are in progress, and several large acquisitions have created integration opportunities," observes Terrence O'Leary, the Boston region's branch manager for IT recruiter Sapphire Technologies. "Despite the sub-prime mortgage problems and their effect on financial institutions, we still are seeing high demand for top IT talent."

But demand for exactly whom? O'Leary lists project managers, business analysts, infrastructure experts (systems administrators and DBAs on both Windows and UNIX platforms), and security and development talent. J2EE and .NET have been the languages most commonly in demand.

At Dice, the number of IT jobs posted leapt significantly last winter, then grew slowly and steadily until making a slight dip in the third quarter. Still, there are more than 4,200 jobs listed, 400 more than were available in February.

New arrivals in town include Google, Novartis and, for the first time, Microsoft, which wants to tap into university talent and employ more than 100 people. Boston also remains a key financial services hub. Mutual fund firms such as Fidelity, wealth management business units for major banks, and an abundance of hedge fund companies call Boston home, says O'Leary. High-tech job hunters may also want to investigate Akamai and Palomar Medical Technologies, two of the fastest-growing tech businesses in America according to Money and Fortune magazines respectively.

Boston also attracts tech professionals to its widely known medical centers and hospitals. At UMass Memorial Medical Center, we found 10 current IT openings, most relating to applications and systems analysis or project management. (On the flip side, we found only two current listings at Brigham and Women's Hospital, one for a programmer and the other for a senior systems administrator. Still, it's worth remembering that besides financial services and technology, health care is big in Beantown.)

"The Massachusetts economy is being pulled in two directions," notes Alan Clayton-Matthews, a professor at U.Mass-Boston and co-editor of the university's economics journal MassBenchmarks. In June, Clayton-Matthews wrote that "On the upside, strong demand for the state's technology-, science-, knowledge-, and health-based goods and services is creating good job and income growth. On the downside, the housing market slump is restraining employment growth and consumer spending in related sectors."

Still, according to the 2007 AeA Cyberstates report, Massachusetts remains the sixth largest cyberstate, employing 237,500 people in technology fields. The state has the second-highest concentration of tech talent, with 86 out of every 1,000 private sector workers employed by the high-tech industry. Cyberstates says that R&D, computer systems design and related services, and software development are all on the rise. And Massachusetts is one of the few states that continues to have a strong technology manufacturing base for instruments, consumer electronics and peripherals.