Recovery: CIO jobs rebound in 2010

As bad as 2009 was for employment in the United States, CIO job openings picked up in the last half of 2009 with positive signs for more good news in 2010. "The bottom was reached in the first quarter [of 2009], and it started to turn around mid-summer," Mark Anderson, president of ExecuNet, tells CIO.com.

"Right now we're definitely seeing the market rebound for CIOs and [for executives] across the board. We're seeing about a 23 percent increase in the number of jobs being posted in our private network from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the fourth quarter of 2009," he adds.

A December 2009 survey by ExecuNet found an expected 19 percent increase in search assignments in 2010. In 2009, search assignments were down 30 percent from 2008 as the recession began to take its toll, CIO.com reports.

Anderson adds that executive recruiters polled by ExecuNet in December anticipate a 19 percent increase in search assignments in 2010. Last year, search assignments were down 30 percent from 2008, according to ExecuNet, so the 20 percent increase in 2010 won't quite recover the business lost in 2009.

Dice.com, which targets IT professionals, observed a similar uptick in employment activity during the second half of the year. By the end of December, the number of jobs advertised on Dice exceeded over 50,000, up from a low of about 45,000 job ads in the middle of the year.

"Typically we see job count drop off toward the end of the year. I look at that as a sign of encouraging things to come in 2010," Dice.com CMO Tom Silver said.

For more on CIO jobs opening up:
- see this CIO.com article

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