"IT has been a very bad market for a long time here," says a comment in Dice's discussion forums, from a user who describes himself as a DUMPIE (Discarded Urban Mature Professional Information Employee). "I don't think that employment is changing in IT any more than it has for the last six or seven years, it's just that now other industries are tanking, too."

Still, people are being hired in San Diego. Those finding jobs the most quickly are .NET developers, Java developers, J2EE developers, and DBAs, says Cordero. "Demand for network engineers and systems engineers seems to be rising," he observes. "I have seen a little more balance between skill sets in demand, whereas a year ago development was clearly hotter."

Across all industries, San Diego area employers expect to hire at a steady pace
during the fourth quarter of 2007, according to the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey. From October to December, 36 percent of the companies interviewed plan to bring on more employees, says Manpower spokesperson Phil Blair.

In the tech arena, IT staffing consultancy Robert Half Technology's fourth-quarter IT Hiring Index finds that 10 percent of San Diego-area CIOs plan to make new hires this quarter. And at any given moment throughout the year, San Diego job hunters visiting Dice have been able to scan between 1,350 and 1,600 jobs. (At the end of September, Dice had 1,500 listings in the city.) IT experts looking for the area's fastest-growing companies should check out Kintera Inc., Inovio Biomedical Corp., Illumina Inc., NuVasive Inc. and SGX Pharmaceuticals.

"Silicon Valley remains the nexus for high tech in California," wrote Tim Guertin, president and chief executive of Varian Medical Systems in AeA's 2007 Cyberstates report for California. "But southern California employs nearly as many tech workers as northern California and tends to offer workers a lower cost of living."

Cordero added that cutting-edge businesses in telecommunications, biotechnology, software, electronics, defense, financial services and other major industries are drawn to San Diego by favorable business tax rates (lower than any of the largest U.S. cities). In fact, said Cordero, "San Diego has been dubbed the 'Telecom Valley,' becoming the nation's center for wireless industries, with more fiber-optic cable installed than any county in the nation - over 200,000 miles."

If independent studies forecasting San Diego to be one of the top 10 cities in the country for employment growth through 2025 are correct, perhaps it's the right place today to lay career plans for tomorrow.