IT Jobs Grow by 25,000 in First 2 Months of 2010

According to industry trade group TechServe Alliance, January and February of 2010 saw a nice growth spurt of 25,000 newly employed technology jobs. It’s a happy trend to be reporting on, but even by TechServe Alliance’s standards, the number of technology jobs is still below where it was in February of 2009.

“Despite strong sequential growth the last two months, on a year-over-year basis, IT employment is still about 3 percent lower than it was in February 2009,” wrote TechServe in a March 5 statement.

So what should you make of this? It’s difficult to ignore 25,000 newly employed technology jobs, no matter how you slice it. It’s not 50,000 or 75,000 new jobs, but it’s a good start for the year.

Will it sustain? The jury is still out.

Here’s how Mark Roberts, the CEO of TechServe Alliance, puts it in context for the rest of the year, with a predictable positive spin:

“Following January’s encouraging IT employment report, February’s accelerating growth strongly suggests last month’s positive numbers were not an anomaly. … Posting an increase of over 25,000 IT jobs during the first two months of the year is both heartening and a positive harbinger for the future. I believe the data reflects renewed optimism among business leaders as they reverse recession-driven cutbacks and tackle critical IT projects that had been temporarily shelved. We expect to see an improving environment for both IT services and their affiliated professionals as the year unfolds.“

I hope he is right.