What's so great about Raleigh? Well, it's the No. 7 Business Boomtown (Inc. magazine), a Top 10 Metro Area for Job Growth (Business 2.0 magazine), the No. 4 Hottest Job Market for Young Adults (Bizjournals), the Best Place for Business and Careers (Forbes), and a Top Ten Tech Town (Wired magazine). Those are only some of the accolades heaped on this dynamic region in 2007 so far.

Raleigh and its environs are of course well known for Research Triangle Park, which comprises 7,000 total acres and is home to more than 150 organizations employing more than 39,000 people.

Blue-chip companies like IBM, GlaxoSmithKline, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Red Hat, SAS Institute and Sony Ericsson all have operations in the area, while three nearby universities keep new employees and innovations coming.

Dice user Durdana Yousuf puts it succinctly: "If one has IT skills, then it's hard to stay unemployed in this area." Does he believe the Research Triangle area has the same reputation it had five, ten, or 15 years ago as a place to build a tech career? "Yes."

On the other hand, "IT requirements have slowed down considerably since mid-summer," says Debra Reed, branch manager for IT recruiter Sapphire Technologies' Raleigh/Durham office. "Our larger clients' IT needs depend on the contracts they are awarded. About 30 percent of our clients expect to have hiring needs through the end of the year and about 10 percent expect to reduce their staffs. Based on what we are hearing from our clients, we should expect slow but steady growth in the IT market for 2008."

However, current activity on Dice isn't quite as encouraging. For the past two quarters, job listings for Raleigh have decreased. While there were more than 900 listings in January, the number had fallen to around 730 as of the end of September. Nevertheless, the annual Milken Institute Best Performing Cities Index, which measures an area's ability to create and maintain jobs, ranks Raleigh at number 10 of 200 major metro areas, up from 45th place last year.

Stephen Kraus, a local project management specialist who has sought out both contract and full-time projects over the past few years, agrees the current situation is challenging, with hourly contract rates dropping and high-paying full-time jobs few and far between. It's important to know your skills and package them well, he says.

Sapphire's Reed identifies Java, .NET, project management, business analysis, and niche network and systems support as the skills that are in demand - and have been for the past couple of years. "I am cautiously optimistic about the IT outlook for 2008," she says. "The election year, problems in the housing and credit markets, and energy costs are factors that could weigh on our growth locally, but the Research Triangle Park will always have hiring needs because of the number of IT firms based here. Expansion will continue to be a mix of contract-based and direct-hire employees."

The quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, which covers all industries, reports that Raleigh area companies expect to hire at a solid pace during the fourth quarter. From October to December, 33 percent of the companies interviewed plan to hire more employees, said Manpower spokesperson Jeff Stocks.

As a state, North Carolina is somewhat of a tech beacon, with an inflow of $472 million in venture capital in 2006 and a total tech workforce of 142,300 people, according to AeA's annual Cyberstates report. Statewide growth in tech jobs can be found in Internet services, engineering and R&D sectors.

Fast-growing companies include Trivirix, Art.com and PeopleClick. At Art.com, recent job listings included spots for interface designers, user experience experts, software engineers, QA engineers, SQL Server experts and network architects. At PeopleClick, jobs are available for project managers, business analysts, security engineers and software developers.

Raleigh seems to have it all: a huge and vibrant tech community, relatively low cost of living, and high rankings for quality of life. No wonder it's a popular spot for relocations. If you're going to take your tech career to a new city, why not pick one that has so much going for it?