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July 30, 1999
Web posted at: 1:54 p.m. EDT (1754 GMT)

by Barb Cole-Gomolski

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(IDG) -- Demand for information technology professionals -- especially in corporate IT departments -- will remain strong even after year 2000 work wraps up and Y2K coders enter the labor market, according to recruiters and IT managers.

In fact, a report published by the U.S. Department of Commerce earlier this month estimated that 1.6 million new IT workers will be needed between now and 2006.

"I don't think there's going to be any flood of talent in the market [after Y2K]," said Margaret Bouline, vice president of IT at Aviall Inc., an airplane parts distributor in Dallas. "There is such an overwhelming shortage [of IT workers]."

One reason is workers finishing year 2000 projects aren't likely to have skills that are most in demand today, like Web development, she said.

Lynn Dressel, a human resources manager at Carlson Cos., a $22 billion travel firm in Minneapolis, agreed. Most of the company's year 2000 staff are contractors, so she said she doesn't expect an abundance of Carlson IT employees looking for things to do.

Actually, "once we finish Y2K, we'll start firing up a lot of initiatives that were on the back burner," Dressel said. The company is also building a surplus of IT workers in the hope of relying less on outsourcing.

The conclusion of Y2K work may affect the consulting area, observers said. Still, many consulting firms have started to divert people off year 2000 projects to avoid big drops in earnings when work is done.

Bouline questioned how available Y2K consultants would be. "I think most companies will need the consultants to stay on [long past the millennium] because their systems will be unstable," she said.