Here are some interesting IT employment numbers for North America

(from "Information Week", July 18, 2005)

In the Summer 2005 the total number of IT professionals reached 3.43 million which only slightly less than the 3.55 million of Summer 2001. Between 2001 and 2005 the IT industry suffered a big slump and then a slow recovery.

There also has been a realignment in the IT workforce over the past 4 years, as many of those who quit the profession in the wake of the dot-com bust came back to it, but often in more traditional roles.

The realignment meant a loss of 180,000 programmmers (a 25% decline in this profession), as companies use more prepackaged apps and send more programming assignments offshore. It also meant a loss of 38,000 computer scientists and analysts, 8,000 of computer-support specialists and 10,000 network systems and data communications analysts.

The biggest employment gains came among computer and IS managers (70,000), computer software engineers (87,000), database administrators (27,000), network and computer systems administrators (21,000).