Information technology workers will continue to be in demand in New England during the last three months of the year, according to a survey by RHI Consulting of Menlo Park, Calif. Nearly a quarter of the New England chief information officers, or CIOs, polled said they expected to hire additional technical employees during the fourth quarter. Only about 1 percent of the CIOs surveys said they had no plans to hire additional staff.
“That’s a pretty good spread for us, so we’re excited about New England,” said Tony Manfredi, a sales manager in RHI Consulting’s Lexington, Mass., office.
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The survey results for New England were similar to the overall results for the United States, and New England ranked second among U.S. regions after Pacific Coast states. RHI Consulting surveyed 1,400 chief information officers from a broad range of U.S. companies with more than 100 employees.
RHI Consulting’s findings stand in contrast to a recent survey of small technology companies.
Corporate Technology Information Services Inc. of Woburn, Mass., found Rhode Island ranks among the last in the nation in projected growth of technology manufacturing jobs over the next year. The research company, which tracks technology manufacturers nationally, projects growth of just under 3 percent for Rhode Island, while the national average projected growth of technology manufacturing jobs is 7 percent.
Only Alaska, North Dakota and West Virginia ranked lower than Rhode Island in the survey. Corporate Technology surveyed 89 Rhode Island technology companies with fewer than 1,000 employees.
RHI Consulting’s Manfredi attributes the better prospects for information technology workers at larger firms, which aren’t necessarily technology companies, to the rapid growth of the Internet and electronic commerce. Companies must pump up their information technology departments as they expand their presence on the World Wide Web or turn to outside e-commerce firms that, in turn, must hire additional staff to meet the increased demand for their services.
New England’s strength in the RHI Consulting survey may be driven in part by an Internet push among Boston financial services companies, Manfredi said.
Rhode Island-specific information technology hiring data isn’t available from RHI Consulting, but the state Department of Labor’s projections show a bright outlook for information technology workers in the Ocean State.
The number of systems analysts here, for example, is expected to jump more than 100 percent from just fewer than 1,850 in 1996 to more than 3,708 in 2006, according to labor department projections.
By contrast, the state average job growth rate is expect to increase just 11 percent over the 10-year period, said the department’s Bob Langlais, Rhode Island’s assistant director for labor market information. “All the computer jobs are pretty much fast growing professions,” Langlais added.
The numbers of database administrators and computer support specialists in Rhode Island are expected to increase 64 percent during the same period–from 104 to 171 and from 349 to 573, respectively. Computer programming jobs are projected to grow at a slower 22 percent clip from fewer than1,500 in 1996 to more than 1,800 in 2006, according to the labor department’s estimates.
RHI Consulting’s information technology hiring survey for the fourth quarter of this year disclosed similar hiring plans in New England as the fourth quarter of 1998, but slightly less hiring was foreseen by CIOs than was predicted in the third quarter of this year.
“If there are any slowdowns at all in hiring in New England, it might be because some (information technology) initiatives have been put on hold until they complete their Y2K conversion projects,” Manfredi said, referring to the year 2000, or Y2K, computer glitch that has many companies racing to update their computer systems to distinguish between 2000 and 1900. “If there’s any slow down, it may be because these companies want to make sure they’re up to speed on Y2K before they go on to new technologies.”
