When asked about non-traditional benefits, IT workers were more interested in job-related training (20%) than the general work force (13%). However, their first choice is a more flexible work schedule, a sentiment shared by the population at large.

Some positive trends:

• More people than ever are employed in information technology, according to an analysis by InformationWeek magazine. The publication calculated that 3.47 million IT workers were employed through the end of the first quarter – about 17,000 more than the fourth quarter of 2005.
• Tech job board Dice.com reports the tech job market "continues to thrive" as postings on Dice through April rose 31 percent over the past year to 89,286 openings. 
• Tech-sector job cuts announced in the first quarter were 40 percent lower than the same quarter a year ago. It was the fourth consecutive quarter in which tech cuts were below the previous year’s level, according to a tech-sector report by outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.
• Industry trade group AeA reports that high-tech companies in the US added 61,000 more jobs than they cut last year – the first such growth since 2000.
• California maintains its title as tech employment capital of the US. California continues to offer more jobs (904,920) and better pay (averaging $90,554 annually) than any other state, according to AeA.
• In a quarterly survey by the tech industry trade publication CIO Magazine, 26.3 percent of chief information officers said IT labor was hard to find and keep – double the 13 percent of CIOs who said the same thing a year ago.
• Will the technical employment comeback continue? Judging by the big boost in venture capital funding in 2005, California can expect further solid job growth, according to AeA. Investors poured $10.4 billion into California firms in 2005, up from $10 billion in 2004 and $8.3 billion in 2003.

Nearly half (43 percent) of the job cuts this year in all sectors resulted from mergers, and 88 percent of those merger cuts occurred in telecommunications.

While the numbers are encouraging for high-tech workers, a survey of members of the Society for Information Management found employers also want applicants with entrepreneurial and business skills. Based on interviews with 96 SIM members, all of them IT managers at firms ranging from small companies to multinational enterprises, the study found that business skills accounted for five of the ten attributes organizations want from staffers in the next three years.