Top Nine IT Skills

Twenty-nine percent of U.S. companies are planning to increase their IT employee headcounts over the next year, according to a new survey by Computerworld.

Computerworld's Forecast 2012 survey found that 29 percent of the 353 IT executives polled plan to increase IT staffing through next summer, while 17 percent plan decreases in staff and 54 percent say staff numbers will remain the same.

So what are the top skills to remain competitive in the IT job market through 2012? IT managers are thinking about innovation as well as investing in infrastructure upgrades and investments that have been shelved over the past three years, Computerworld found. The most in-demand skills are in programming and application development, with 61 percent of respondents planning to hire people with these skills over the next 12 months.

Like the federal government, project and program management also is a top, in-demand skill, with 44 percent of respondents indicating plans to hire project managers in the next 12 months. Surprisingly, projected demand for security experts is only 17 percent, down from 32 percent in Computerworld's 2010 survey.

Rounding out the list was help desk/technical support (35 percent), networking (35 percent), business intelligence (23 percent), data center (18 percent), Web 2.0 (18 percent) and telecommunications (9 percent).