Luftman, who was scheduled to present the survey findings during a SIMposium session today, said the weak economy is the primary factor pushing IT executives to try "to maintain technical support at a lesser rate." Also, the pipeline for qualified IT job candidates in the US "isn't adequate to fill the demand," he said. "So companies are forced to fill the spots elsewhere."
In response to another survey question, only 15 percent of the respondents said that they expected to reduce their IT headcounts next year. Even though the survey was conducted in June and business conditions have worsened dramatically since then, Luftman said he doesn't expect to see big changes in the number of expected cutbacks.
"In June, we didn't experience the [economic] hit that we did in the last month or two, but everyone was anticipating it," Luftman said. In addition, IT executives are being more proactive about spending changes than they were in the post-9/11 economic downturn, he said. So if anything were to change from a staffing perspective next year, it might be the size of salary increases or whether IT workers even receive one, Luftman added.