Gartner Predicts IT Staffs Will See Moderate Growth

The increase will accelerate the trend of IT professionals shopping around for positions with other companies, Gartner added.

"Total IT voluntary turnover was higher in the 2005 survey than last year," said Lily Mok, a senior consultant with Gartner, in a statement. "This may imply that as the IT employment market improves further, IT professionals will consider leaving their current jobs for better opportunities."

According to Gartner's annual IT worker compensation survey, 66 percent of the organizations polled said that they projected some increase in IT staffing. Among the sectors anticipating the most growth in their IT departments are financial service firms: 22 percent of those surveyed said they plan to bump up technology staffs by more than 10 percent.

Salaries in 2005, said Gartner, are 3.5 percent higher than the year previous. The gain is 0.3 percent greater than 2004 over 2003.

The hardest-to-hire IT positions, said the survey, were project managers, Web application programmers, security analysts, database administrators, and network engineers.