As all who have upgraded their skills, polished their resumes, and gone looking for new jobs in the information technology (IT) sector may attest, the supposed shortage of workers does not always translate into a quick new placement at a handsome salary in the field.

Yet at least one industry group estimates that there are upwards of 840,000 jobs in IT that will go unfilled this year. So what about the stories of IT workers who can't find work? Is there indeed a dearth of qualified IT workers?

The IT sector has become a significant component of our national economy. According to the American Electronics Association, it is now the third-largest industry sector behind construction and financial services. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates that the high-tech industry is expected to create an additional 2 million jobs by 2008. By the end of this decade, 7 million Americans are projected to be working for a high-tech company.

With this powerful engine helping to drive the economy, those in both the public and private sectors worry that labor constraints could have a detrimental effect. Accurately and objectively quantifying supply and demand for IT labor is important to help guide public-policy decisions, such as recent legislation increasing the number of temporary foreign-worker (H-1B) visas issued. High-tech companies are among the major beneficiaries of this change.

Unfortunately, objective government data from organizations such as BLS and the Census Bureau conform to old occupational categories and do not reflect the rapidly evolving IT marketplace. So we have a fundamental problem in legislating for the high-tech worker shortage: How do we know how many foreign workers we need if we don't have accurate statistics?

A recent study by a panel of the National Research Council (NRC) attempted to clarify the IT labor situation using available government data, information from trade organizations, and anecdotal evidence. The study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA, was released at the end of October 2000. It attempts to frame the reasons for what the agencies term "tightness" in the IT labor market in a dispassionate way.

What is behind the numbers?

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), which consists of 400 direct and 26,000 affiliate corporate members throughout the United States, estimates that companies in this country will need roughly 1.6 million IT workers this year. With demand for appropriately skilled people far exceeding supply, half of these positions (843,328) will likely go unfilled, according to the ITAA, which estimates the total U.S. IT workforce at 10 million. That means one job in every dozen will be vacant.

Critics of these numbers say they do not reflect what is actually happening in the marketplace with reports of skilled people having trouble finding IT jobs. Those who question the ITAA numbers point to the broad way IT workers are defined.

"They say 800,000 positions [are vacant] but they range from [requiring] someone with a Ph.D. in computer science to someone who may have had a four-hour course in Windows 2000," says Paul J. Kostek, past president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE), which represents 230,000 high-tech workers in the United States. "The skills mix is all over the place."

Although he doesn't doubt that it may be difficult to find an ample supply of workers in specific types of positions--for instance, Java programmers--the market for qualified workers will eventually catch up with demand, Kostek says.

"Changing technologies is not a recent phenomenon," he says. "As any new technology comes along, people need time to transition to it, and there has to be time for students to be exposed to these things in universities."

Neither BLS nor the Census Bureau has statistics that back up or refute the ITAA's numbers. The ITAA defends its data as the result of painstaking research gathered directly from hiring managers at a variety of companies. "This is original research," says Tinabeth Burton, spokesperson for the ITAA. "It was very time-consuming and thorough."

To arrive at its most recent estimate of unfilled IT jobs in this country, the ITAA first refined its definition of an IT worker. Working with the Northwest Center for Emerging Technologies, the ITAA used eight detailed categories, each of which included anywhere from 10 to 25 sample job titles. The categories ranged from database administration and development, which includes jobs such as database developer and systems analyst, to digital media, which includes positions such as Web designer and media specialist. Technical support, which includes customer- and sales-support positions as well as help-desk technicians, was the category with the largest number of vacancies, Burton says.

Using these IT-worker categories, the ITAA then interviewed 700 hiring managers at both IT and non-IT companies. The organization asked how many jobs these managers needed to fill in 2000, and how many they anticipated remaining vacant because of lack of skilled workers, according to Burton.

"It was assumed that these jobs needed to be filled in order to get the work done," Burton says, noting that this was not an employment advertising survey that might omit essential positions. Based on these findings, the ITAA came up with its figure of 843,000 vacancies.

"We have heard anecdotal evidence and isolated stories of IT workers who have remained unemployed," Burton says, pointing out that for every story of someone who can't find an IT job, there also is one about someone who has had multiple job offers. "We ask for data to substantiate this anecdotal evidence, and there isn't any. Until someone comes up with the scientific data, we have to dismiss these as anecdotal, isolated incidences."

The NRC study noted that "the number of jobs that 'need' to be filled is not a well-defined quantity," because by "changing production modes, improving productivity, and so on, a firm may be able to do the same work with fewer workers."

The study also pointed out that within the IT sector, demand for certain jobs is particularly high while it is lower for other types. And this situation is rapidly evolving. For instance, in the aftermath of the Y2K programming problem, demand for Cobol programmers declined, while demand for e-commerce specialists and Java programmers increased. Positions requiring workers with these hot skills take longer to fill.

High turnover rates also contribute to vacancy rates, the NRC study says; turnover within the IT sector can approach 50 percent a year. In contrast, the national average turnover rate for non-IT workers is 11.7 percent.

To compound the problem of quantifying a labor shortage, the size of the labor pool seeking IT jobs is subject to dispute. The ITAA has estimated the current IT labor pool at 10 million, while BLS says it totals 3.5 million. The NRC study notes that the labor pool is constantly in flux, depending on factors such as compensation and wages and employers' willingness to train new hires. The study estimates the overall IT workforce to be at least 5 million strong.

The large number of applicants for IT job openings is often cited as an indication that there are large numbers of skilled workers available. The NRC study concludes that this is more likely due to individuals applying for multiple jobs, testing the job market, and the growing use of Internet rŽsumŽ postings.

Critics of the study and of ITAA numbers claim that just as job seekers play the field, so do companies. "Most of the job postings on company Web sites and in the papers are never filled," says one IBM programmer who requested anonymity. "Not that there aren't qualified applicants; but companies are looking for talent in the 99th percentile. These people are typically already employed by someone else and could get a job just about anywhere regardless of what's advertised."

Layoffs within the IT industry are considerable, the NRC study says, but technical workers who find themselves without a job may or may not have the skills needed by employers who are growing and hiring. Hiring laid-off workers also may depend on employers' willingness to train and enhance the workers' technical skills.

The NRC study also points out that the tightness in the IT labor market is within a context of low unemployment in the overall economy.

Why the numbers are important

One example of the importance such numbers play in the public-policy arena was the recent debate over whether to raise the cap on the number of H-1B visas issued. Such a visa allows a company to hire a foreign-born worker temporarily if he or she possesses skills the company says it is unable to find among the U.S. labor force. The majority of H-1B visas are issued for workers in the IT sector.

Last fall, after a long debate over whether increasing the cap would displace qualified U.S. workers and affect wages in the sector, President Clinton signed a bill increasing the number of H-1B visas to 195,000 for each of the next three years, starting with the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Without the law, the number would have been 107,500 for this fiscal year and 65,000 in subsequent years. The new law also increases the fee for a visa from $500 to $1,000, to raise around $170 million to be used mainly for retraining programs.

The NRC report states that H-lB workers currently constitute about 10 percent of the IT workforce. Hiring these workers does have an effect on wages in the sector, the NRC study says. It keeps them from rising as fast as would be expected if the demand for qualified IT workers were as great as industry groups contend it is.

Some in the industry say that the H-1B program offers an immediate solution to a shortage of workers in certain segments of the IT sector, while the long-term answer is better training for American students beginning at the K-12 level and continuing through college.

"Even if there were no shortage of skilled workers, high-tech companies would continue to use the H-1B visa program to ensure access to talented individuals," states a recent study by the American Electronics Association titled "Supply Doesn't Equal Demand, 2000." The ITAA's position is in accord with the NRC report's conclusion that there is not "a silver bullet" to address the problem of labor tightness.

"There is no single solution to this problem," says Burton of the ITAA. "Bringing in temporary foreign workers is a feasible short-term solution." Improving math and science education from the K-12 levels and up is a long-term answer to increasing the supply of workers prepared for work in this sector, Burton says. "Our educational system is designed for the agrarian age, with kids getting the summers off," Burton says. "And here we are in the information age."

Others disagree that the country's educational system is failing American companies by not producing enough graduates with IT-related degrees.

"There has always been a number of people doing IT work without technical training," says Kostek of the IEEE. "There are liberal-arts majors and English majors. It has never been the case that you must have a computer-science degree. Companies that say that are probably the same ones that would never have hired Bill Gates."

Kostek went on to note that raising the H-1B visa cap provides a disincentive for college students to pursue IT-related degrees when they may be filled by H-1B workers. He also questions the contention of many companies that the workers employed on the H-1B program are only the best and the brightest.

"Are they absolutely the best and the brightest?" he says. "Can they honestly say there isn't some kid graduating from college somewhere here who isn't as good?"

Current IEEE President Merrill W. Buckley, Jr., responded to the NRC's report by stating that the "panel never considered how disposable-temporary workers who are highly motivated by hopes of making a home in the U.S. displace older workers and place obstacles to women and minorities entering the field."

There have been allegations of age discrimination in the IT industry. Data gathered by the NRC does reveal that the IT workforce is younger in terms of average age than in other occupations and that IT workers older than 40 are more likely to lose their jobs then younger workers. But it also states that older workers are just as likely to find new jobs and in the same length of time as younger IT workers. Still, the study says, older workers are not being fully utilized in the industry.

The ITAA points to a variety of training and retraining programs its members have implemented for established workers, including a program to train displaced homemakers for IT positions.

While everyone seems to agree that the IT sector is playing a significant role in the growth of the economy, the state of the IT labor market is harder to quantify. Perhaps, as the NRC study points out, "perceptions of the IT labor market depend in large part on who perceives it."

Elaine Ellis Stone is a freelance technology reporter living in St. Paul, Minn.