More Good News For IT Workers

Exactly one week ago this blog reported that a shortage of IT workers loomed, thanks in part to a 20 percent drop this year in college students majoring in IT disciplines. That's the supply end of the equation.

Now comes good news from the demand side (courtesy of BusinessWeek.com):

A new survey out this week from AeA, the group formerly known as the American Electronics Association, reports that jobs in the technology industry are growing at a healthy clip, especially in large cities. The organization's Cybercities 2008 survey says that 51 cities added high-technology jobs in 2006, the most recent year for which data were available. The survey tracks new jobs related to the creation of tech products, including fields such as chip manufacturing and software engineering.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the metro area showing the largest growth in number of jobs was Seattle (to which we can add one more job with the departure of that young Gates fellow from Microsoft). Next were the New York and Washington, D.C. metro areas.

On a percentile basis, the fastest-growing metro area was Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., where tech jobs increased by 12 percent. Pretty interesting, but even more interesting is:

The highest concentration of technology workers -- 286 for every 1,000 workers -- was in, no surprise, Silicon Valley. Boulder, Colo., came in second, with 230, and Huntsville, Ala.; Durham, N.C.; and Washington rounded out the top five in density.

Combine the IT worker shortage with the rising cost of commuting and the increased ability of tech professionals to do their jobs from home, and it all adds up to a pretty sweet picture for members of Geek Nation. And if that's not enough, they might not even have to bother learning those social skills everyone keeps insisting they acquire. Revenge of the nerds, indeed.