Despite the slow and unsteady economic recovery, IT industry executives also express optimism for the future. The CompTIA survey panel expects the Business Confidence Index to increase 5.4 points over the next six months.
The CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index slipped 1.4 points in June compared to the March reading. All three index components – overall economy, IT industry and individual company – fell slightly.
“IT industry executives remain relatively confident about the tech sector and about their firm’s prospects, but concern over the health of the U.S. economy persists,” said Tim Herbert, vice president, research, CompTIA. “In some ways the results point to a ‘two steps forward, one step back’ mentality, where positive news and momentum are followed by unexpected bad news and a renewed sense of negativity about economic conditions.”
An encouraging sign from the report suggests that employment may finally be on the mend. Intent to increase staffing levels jumped seven points in the latest CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index, translating to 37 percent of IT firms expecting to increase hiring over the next six months.
“Among those planning to add staff, the top positions to fill include programmers, developers, support staff and help desk, sales staff, project managers and network engineers,” Herbert noted.
For IT firms still in a hiring holding pattern, 47 percent say they are fully staffed but would like to add new employees in order to expand their business. Conversely, 53 percent of these firms indicate they are understaffed by between 5 percent and 20 percent.
IT industry executives are considerably less concerned about the threat of a stalled recovery, weak consumer demand, access to credit and capital and competition from overseas firms compared to six months ago. Fear of a stalled recovery fell from 58 percent in December 2009 to 46 percent in June 2010; fear of weak consumer demand fell from 56 percent to 40 percent; and fear about access to credit and capital fell from 41 percent to 26 percent.
Smaller tech firms continue to express greater nervousness about the economy and their firm’s prospects, relative to large tech companies. Access to credit and capital is still tight for small firms, so any significant cash flow disruption (such as delayed payments from customers) or a need for financing (new contracts) can be catastrophic.
