Dice recently launched a new advertising campaign which is beginning to pick up momentum as it spreads from Silicon Valley and San Francisco to other major cities including New York, Seattle and Austin. Whether you find these almost-nude techies offensive or hilarious, the campaign’s message is about “breaking down the stereotype of the tech geek” and aims to reinforce the tight market for these much needed skills. So, while we could be talking about Matt and his lion-printed boxers, we’ll opt for what this all actually means for your business.

 

Year over year, research supports stable and low unemployment rates for IT talent. Currently, the unemployment rate for engineers is 2.5% and continues to be the #1 sought after skill. National unemployment has fallen dramatically to 5.6%, but remains much higher than the rate for programmers, software developers, engineers, alike.

Why do you care?

Just over a year ago, we blogged about this very topic and what the low and steady unemployment IT rates meant for law firms. The quick answer: IT professionals are not being placed within law firms – they are being placed at IT firms which means if your firm is looking to access top talent for application development, you may need to revisit your current outsourcing strategy.

The 2014 ILTA Technology Purchasing Survey shows a 1% increase from 2013 (17% to 18%) when asked about application development outsourcing. This steady uptick is no surprise and we expect this percentage to rise as IT budgets either remain flat or also increase.

Dice president, Shravan Goli, states that the imagery is about “empowering them” and at the very least, make people smile while stuck in traffic or walking through Times Square. I agree that it’s worthy of a smile but as far as empowering my programmers, I have different plans in place.

Here’s a peek into our very own “tech geeks:”

To read more about this topic of IT unemployment rates and how this affects your law firm, click here.