It is my impression of the market that the IT job market did not crash like the rest. Talking to other programmers and hardware guys, it's clear that IT did not have the level of group layoffs that other fields faced. And by looking at who is recruiting and counting the number of blind calls from job placement firms I get, it's obvious that some companies where looking for IT the whole way through. I've actually seen a billboard for a company looking for IT guys last month. I have not seen a company doing that sort of mass appeal recruitment in years.

There is such a maze of narrow specialties in IT that finding what you are looking for can be hard, particularly if you don't want to pay well. Companies expecting to hire a Java programmer for the same they can hire an VB programmer are going to be disappointed. Companies that expect multiple years in several different rare specialties had better be offering a good job.

This has all be said before though, and I expect to see a lot of articles along these lines as the economy begins to pick up. Articles of this sort are put out every so often whenever the economy is expanding because most companies are actually bad at recruiting and often more worried that they don't over pay then the quality of the employee.

Jay