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By Alorie Gilbert, 26 July 2005 08:55

NEWS The best bet for finding work in the IT industry could be a job at a bank and government agency, going by a new survey.

According to a study from Gartner, 63 per cent of companies in the financial services industry plan to add IT staff over the next 12 months - a greater percentage than in any other sector. The runner-up is the government sector, with 62 per cent of US public, not-for-profit organisations planning to grow their tech headcount, Gartner reported on Monday.

But Gartner still had good news for those who find the thought of working for a buttoned-down banker or bureaucrat unappealing: two-thirds of the 160 organisations it surveyed in March projected "some level of increase" in their IT staffing. However, the pace of hiring will be moderate, the research firm noted in its report.

The most difficult positions to fill are those for IT project managers, web applications programmers, computer security analysts, database administrators and network engineers, respondents said. The most sought-after skills include experience with Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP systems, as well as with Extensible Markup Language, or XML, the report noted. Mastery of J2EE, Microsoft .Net, Java or Visual C# programming language is also in great demand, Gartner said.

With recruiting on the rebound, companies that want to retain technical workers should evaluate their retention programmes, Gartner said. The report noted that companies are now seeing more IT workers leave voluntarily than they did a year ago.

Lily Mok, senior consultant with Gartner, said in a statement: "Although the improved job market presents more promising opportunities to IT job seekers, it may also force IT and human resources leaders to respond to increasing IT staff turnover in their companies."

The survey indicated that companies increased the average base salary of IT staff this year by 3.5 per cent, which is 0.3 per cent higher than last year. Many also increased bonus payments and other variable compensation.

Alorie Gilbert writes for CNET News.com