By Allison Bramlet
The Colonnade, Georgia College and State U.

(UWire)--Information technology majors can throw their economic worries aside-at least compared to all other majors on campus.

Statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor have predicted that careers in information technology and related fields will be the fastest-growing occupations by 2010.

According to the Employment & Training Administration in the DOL, "employment of computer and information systems managers is expected to grow between 18 to 26 percent for all occupations through the year 2014."

It is believed that between 2004 and 2014, there will be an increase in employment of 453,000 jobs, totaling to 1.6 million jobs and a growth rate of 3.4 percent.

Out of the nine fastest-growing jobs that require a bachelor's degree, five of them are in information technology. The DOL identifies information technology jobs as computer experts-such as programmers, network analysts, database managers and software engineers-but any technological occupation is sure to see growth.

Even with information technology being so lucrative, there are still not enough qualified people to fill the needed positions

In addition, what the DOL considers the information technology industry is just the beginning. More than 90 percent of information technology workers are employed outside of what is mainly considered to be the information technology industry. Information technology experts are needed in nearly every company because computing and computer science are a part of almost every aspect of life.

"All businesses and all organizations have become dependent on computer technology for all their communication," said Dr. Gerald Adkins, information technology and marketing chair and professor. "It is not really the size of the company that dictates whether the business is totally dependent on computer technology."

From online shopping and banking to communication systems within a company, qualified workers are needed to run and maintain the necessary infrastructures. Unfortunately, even with information technology being so lucrative, there are still not enough qualified people to fill the needed positions.

"We're hurting," said Adkins.

Adkins also said that with everything going electronic and the early baby boomers nearing retirement, the demand for information technology workers will increase further.

In fact, according to an article from The New York Times, computer science and industry executives have warned in the past that a drop in science and engineering students would hurt the United States' ability to compete in the global economy. Therefore, they believe this growth in information technology and computer science to be significant.

Experts believe that even with the tough economy and outsourcing, information technology graduates will continue to be in significant demand, according to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"Outsourcing was a scare initially, until we got experience with outsourcing and have seen that the kind of jobs our computer science graduates go to and are prepared to do ... are not outsourced," Adkins said.

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