IT job market update: Hiring stalled, salaries slashed

Cost-containment remains a primary concern for many IT decision makers, which means IT pros still face salary reductions, potential layoffs and lengthy unemployment stints, according to recent survey data.

Where the IT jobs are: 10 American cities

Surveys conducted in May by Dice and separately by Challenger, Gray & Christmas show that employed IT professionals still have reason to worry about job security and unemployed high-tech workers face a challenging job search. Dice surveyed more than 1,900 human resource professionals and recruiters to learn about hiring plans and found that more than 80% of respondents have scaled back plans in light of the current economy. Layoffs continue to worry some 43% who said they were either very likely or likely, according to Dice, while 43% consider layoffs unlikely at this point.

Dice's research also found that those companies with open positions are taking longer to fill them. Half of those polled by Dice said the time to fill open positions has lengthened, and 65% of those said the longer time is due to caution related to the economy. More than 20% cited a lack of urgency to fill open positions, while just 9% said they experienced an inability to find qualified professionals to fill the jobs. More than 80% indicated an increase in the number of candidates applying for open positions, compared to six months ago, Dice found.

"Many hiring managers report that the skill requirements for open positions are more demanding and hiring times are lengthening," said Tom Silver, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Dice. "While it's not surprising in this economy that companies are being selective, more than 90% of respondents indicated they have at least one hard to find skill set or position to fill."

Dice also queried the technology recruiters and hiring managers about salaries and discovered more than 40% are seeing slightly lower salaries than last year. Another 17% noted that salaries are significantly less than last year. The data in the Dice survey synchs up with a recent poll conducted by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The outplacement firm reported that more than half of more than 200 human resource executives polled in May said their companies instituted salary cuts or freezes in an effort to reduce costs, up more than 27% from a similar survey conducted in January. And while 86% of companies continue to implement cost-cutting measures due to the economy, the survey found that 43% of employers are making permanent reductions, down from 56% in January.

"Companies may have more workers than they need for current business levels but are reluctant to enact widespread layoffs, knowing that a recovery will mean recruiting and training all new workers," said CEO John Challenger, in a statement. "This may be why we have seen an increase in the number of companies cutting salaries and other perks. It is a lot easier to restore compensation and benefits than it is to re-hire and re-train workers when the economy improves."

Do you Tweet? Follow me on Twitter here. 

Acer will use Moblin Linux across its products

The world's third-largest PC vendor plans to roll out the Moblin Linux operating system, championed by Intel, in its products, a top executive said Wednesday.

"Acer is in the process of putting Moblin in the range of its products," said R.C. Chang, chief technology officer at Acer, at a news conference in Taipei. Acer products that will soon run with Moblin Linux include Aspire One nettops, as well as regular laptop and desktop PCs, he said.

Aspire One netbooks already running Moblin were on display at the news conference. Moblin was developed for netbooks, which are mini-laptops built for mobility with low-power microprocessors, 10-inch screens and six-cell batteries for long run times. An updated version of the operating system, Moblin 2.0, was released last month, and it has proven popular at Computex Taipei 2009.

A number of netbooks were on display at the news conference, running several different versions of Moblin on various netbooks, including Suse Moblin, Xandros Moblin, Linpus Moblin, Red Flag Moblin and Ubuntu Moblin running on netbooks from Hewlett-Packard, Asustek Computer, Micro-Star International and Hasee Computer.

There were also a few handheld computers, which Intel calls mobile Internet devices, running Moblin 2.0. BenQ displayed its new S6 MID running on Moblin, while Compal Electronics showed off an MID with a slide-out QWERTY keypad.

Ellis Wang, software product marketing director at Asustek Computer, showed off an Eee Keyboard, which is a keyboard with a built-in LCD screen and computer, with a Moblin OS at the conference.

Moblin 2.0 has met with some controversy since its launch. The easy use and nice look of the software has prompted several reports to call chip giant Intel an OS company, and Moblin 2.0 a rival to Windows in netbooks. Moblin 2.0 offers a number of improvements over the previous version, including an improved user interface, quick boot-up and easy connections to messaging and social networking sites such as Facebook.

Doug Fisher, vice president of the software and services group at Intel, said his team is aiming for a 5-second bootup for Moblin because mobile users are accustomed to quick boot-up times. The company also continues to optimize Moblin to squeeze the most power savings possible out of its Atom microprocessors, he said.