The IT recruitment market continued to drop in the run-up to the
millennium, but e-business and Internet skills bucked the trend,
according to our exclusive SSP survey. Nicholas Enticknap reports
and, overleaf, surveys the impact on salaries.
The final quarter of 1999 saw demand forInternet-relatedskills
increase forthesecond quarter in succession. All other skills fell
in demand as IT sites concentrated on preparations for the
millennium.
Despite the general downturn in recruitment, object-oriented
programming skills were more sought after than
traditional,third-generation programminglanguage
expertise,whileconventionalmainframeand midrange skills continued
their precipitate decline.
These are some of the conclusions from the latest issue of the
SSP/ComputerWeekly Survey of Appoint-ments Data and
Trends.
Java appeared in 5% more job specifications in the fourth
quarter than in the same period last year, and has consequently
risen three places over the year to eighth, equalling its position
in the third quarter of 1998.
Internet skills
Demand for generic Internet skills has risen much more
dramatically, from 1,170 jobs last year to this 1,600 this. This is
a jump of 16 places up the table from 25th to ninth position. Also
entering the top 10 for the first time is HTML, after a 27% rise in
demand from the fourth quarter of 1998.
These increases are the more remarkable because the market was
very quiet, waiting with bated breath for the dawn of the new
millennium. Overall, there were less than half as many jobs offered
during the last three months of 1999 than in the corresponding
period in 1998.
Demand for TCP/IP experience, for example, was less than half
that of a year ago. But TCP/IP still rose up the table four places
to 13th position. E-business applications accounted for the
majority of new developments over the last three months.
Languages
Anothernoteworthy alteration over the last quarter was the rise
in popularity of object-oriented programming. As a generic skill
this has moved 10 places up the table to its highest ever position
of 12th. The most popular object-oriented language, C++, has
consolidated its position at the top of the table by featuring in
over 1,100 more advertisements than any other skill.
In contrast, demand for traditional languages plummeted as Y2K
compliance projects reached completion. Cobol featured in just 700
adverts over the three months, down from 4,500 a year ago, and as a
result has fallen out of the top 10 for the first time since the
SSP survey began.
Cobol is now required for only half of the major IBM mainframe
site development positions, compared to two- thirds a year ago, and
hardly features at all elsewhere. Non-IBM mainframe sites
advertised just three Cobol development positions this period,
compared to 431 a year ago.
The picture is much the same for Digital sites - nine jobs
advertised this year compared to 204 a year ago. Surprisingly, it
is old-fashioned Basic that has replaced Cobol as the most popular
Digital site programming language.
PL/I was another language to soar in demand as a result of year
2000 compliance work, and is now sinking into oblivion just as
quickly. It featured in just 62 advertisements compared to 700 a
year ago, and has fallen 25 places in the table to 59th as a
result.
Other mainframe-related skills showed similar falls in demand.
Cics has fallen 13 places over the year to 25th, and DB2 nine
places to 23rd. In the ICL world, VME demand was down 90% on 1998
and this skill has fallen 24 places to 64th. Expertise in the IDMS
database system featured in only 28 advertisements, again down 90%
on a year ago, while IMS featured in just seven compared to 335
last year.
In the IBM midrange sector, RPG 400 has fallen out of the top 20
after featuring in less than a third of the advertisements of a
year ago. Here the reason is more that AS/400 sites are simply not
recruiting: those that did still specified RPG 400 as a requirement
for nine out of 10 development positions.
Other falls
All of these findings are consistent with a picture of users
switching focus from legacy systems to new applications. There are,
however, some more surprising falls in demand.
Microsoft Office, for example, has seen demand fall by more than
three-quarters, and has tumbled 13 places to 26th as a result.
Powerbuilder is down 11 places to 35th, and Uniface 22 places to
64th.
Demand for Windows NT expertise has fallen by more than the
average for the second consecutive quarter, and has slipped behind
both C++ and Oracle as a result.
Ada is one of the few skills to show an increase in demand both
this time and last. It featured in 290 advertisements in the fourth
quarter, compared to 220 a year ago, and has moved up 29 places to
31st. A third of all Ada demand came from comms companies.
This was the only industry sector to increase its recruitment
relative to last year, which has affected one or two other
placings. X.25, for example, is up 32 places to 29th because the
comms sector was advertising three times as many positions
requiring this skill as a year ago. Lan (up eight places to 15th)
and Wan (up 11 to 16th) also benefit from the increase in
recruiting in this sector.
Skills most in demand over the past quarter
| Position | | Skill | | Jobs on
offer | | Change |
| 4Q99 | 4Q98 | | | 4Q99 | 4Q98 |
| 1 | 4 | C++ | | 5,236 | 8,675 | -40% |
| 2 | 2 | Oracle | | 4,081 | 9,389 | -57% |
| 3 | 1 | Windows NT | | 3,653 | 9,841 | -63% |
| 4 | 3 | Unix | | 3,524 | 8,739 | -60% |
| 5 | 6 | SQL | | 3,425 | 6,172 | -45% |
| 6 | 5 | Visual
Basic | | 3,294 | 6,861 | -52% |
| 7 | 7 | C | | 2,813 | 5,655 | -50% |
| 8 | 11 | Java | | 2,699 | 2,559 | +5% |
| 9 | 25 | Internet | | 1,600 | 1,170 | +37% |
| 10 | 29 | HTML | | 1,182 | 931 | +27% |
| 11 | 9 | Windows | | 1,136 | 4,217 | -73% |
| 12 | 22 | Object-oriented | | 915 | 1,318 | -31% |
| 13 | 17 | TCP/IP | | 874 | 1,841 | -53% |
| 14 | 8 | Cobol | | 729 | 4,487 | -84% |
| 15 | 23 | Lan | | 701 | 1,294 | -46% |
| 16 | 27 | Wan | | 681 | 1,085 | -37% |
| 17 | 18 | SAP | | 622 | 1,675 | -63% |
| 18 | 10 | Novell | | 619 | 2,805 | -78% |
| 19 | 15 | Sybase | | 606 | 2,068 | -71% |
| 20 | 19 | MVS | | 591 | 1,547 | -62% |
| 21 | 16 | RPG 400 | | 567 | 1,952 | -71% |
| 22 | 20 | Access | | 558 | 1,514 | -63% |
| 23 | 14 | DB2 | | 539 | 2,126 | -75% |
| 24 | 21 | Lotus
Notes | | 515 | 1,345 | -62% |
| 25 | 12 | Cics | | 501 | 2,318 | -78% |
| | | | | | | |
| All jobs | | | | 28,701 | 58,020 | -51% |
The SSP/Computer Weekly survey
This article is based on information contained in the
SSP/Computer Weekly Quarterly Survey of Appointments Data
and Trends. The survey analyses advertisements for computer
professionals in the trade press, the quality national dailies and
Sundays. It is primarily intended for recruitment agencies and IT
managers with a substantial recruitment requirement.
The posts advertised are broken down in the survey into 59 job
categories. Within each job category, the survey provides details
of the number of posts advertised and the average and median
national salaries offered for the last quarter and for each of the
previous four.
The survey provides further analyses within each job category by
hardware type, industry type and region. It also provides a
breakdown for the major job categories of the technical skills most
in demand. In each analysis, it again details the average salary on
offer for each of the past five quarters.
The price of a single issue of the survey is £225, and an annual
subscription costs £325. This covers four issues and includes a
free copy of software, which lets you select combinations of
region, industry and software skills for a specified job type.
For further information write to Julie McInally, Floor 12,
Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS.
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