An article in this month’s Trends entitled Dealing with America’s IT Labor Shortage tells us the headlines may look doom and gloom, but not everything is as dark as it might seem.  In fact, you may want to start brushing up on your math and science.

News reports say that IT sectors have lost 180,000 jobs in 2008, and “computer industries are in the worst shape since 2003.”

With major companies announcing layoffs and many IT jobs being sent overseas, things do, indeed, look grim.

However, a 2008 survey conducted by the Society for Information Management found that IT companies have been reducing their amount of off-shoring over the past two years, because “CIO’s are still having trouble finding enough domestic IT workers with the right skills to fill open positions they are keeping in-house.”

The reality: It may look grim at the moment, but we’re going to have a shortage of IT workers as soon as things stabilize and start turning around.  It’s only going to get aggravated when Baby Boomers start retiring en masse in 2011.

So if you know someone teetering on the IT career fence thinking that with all the IT layoffs and the off-shoring going on that IT does not have a future – tell that person to think again.

And, perhaps your college-age children who are still undecided in their majors should reconsider their math and science. The market will turn around, and IT folks will be high demand once again.  Do not subscribe to the doom and gloom, and don’t believe everything you read.  Cycles happen.

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Filed in Technology, Work, Business, Workplace, Corporate Culture, Retention