Back in February, we carried out a study to gauge the mood in the IT industry amid emerging rumours of a credit crunch. While other sectors were announcing huge job cuts and forecasting disappointing results, the research showed that IT was largely unaffected by the doom and gloom – just twelve per cent of those questioned were worried about their job.
However, talk of a recession has increased at an alarming rate since then, with prices soaring, profits falling, and large corporations warning that job cuts are unavoidable.
With every other sector falling victim, IT could not escape – so we wanted to find out how things had changed since earlier in the year. Earlier this month we revisited the survey and asked the same questions as before, then compared the results. They showed that fears over job security in the IT industry have increased four fold since February, with over half of contractors now concerned about their current or future job.
We also found that IT companies are now making redundancies, with one in three reporting job cuts within their organisation – a rise of twenty per cent since February.
However, 52 per cent of respondents said they felt IT was more secure than other industries.
I find these results uplifting and encourgaing. Despite the economic doom and gloom of the past year, the IT sector has been pretty robust. While other industries fell victim to job cuts and declining profits, IT remained resilient. The results of our surveys show it’s only now that we’re feeling the effects of the credit crunch.
No sector is immune from economic fluctuation but any downturn in IT is only likely to be temporary. IT is at the very heart of businesses – companies simply can’t survive without it and this survey demonstrates that IT professionals understand this point.
Unlike during the last recession which was linked to the dot-com boom and bust, this time IT is one of the last fields to be affected by the credit crunch. This means it will be one of the first areas to pick up again when the economy revives so contractors are right to remain confident.
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