Kanani Moser, director of the technology search division at recruiter TriStaff Group, is feeling good about San Diego these days. "It's really strong right now. I've been in this business for nine years, and 2007 was our biggest year - even bigger than the dot-com years. Not only are businesses growing, but qualified employees are harder to find now."

San Diego has earned a dubious reputation as a locale where contract work is more plentiful than full-time positions. It's a frequent complaint of Dice users commenting on earlier reports about the San Diego IT market. Moser notes: "There seems to be less contracting-side hiring right now. Qualcomm hires contract to direct, for example, and that's a good sign because it means they expect to grow and expand."

As 2008 kicks off, the quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey, which covers all industries, found that from January to March, 40 percent of the San Diego companies interviewed plan to hire more employees, says Phil Blair, a Manpower spokesperson. That's one encouraging measure of the current health of the region's economy. In the tech arena, recruiter Robert Half Technology's IT Hiring Index indicates 11 percent of San Diego-area CIOs plan to hire new staff in the first quarter of 2008.

On Dice, on the other hand, the number of available IT jobs in San Diego dropped 11 percent during 2007's fourth quarter. (Seasonality may be partially to blame.) Currently, 1,329 jobs are listed. And according to the new Dice salary survey, the average San Diego IT job pays $75,994, down a disappointing 4.31 percent on the year and barely ahead of the national average. Given the cost of living in southern California, that's not good news.

What kinds of skills are most in demand? The 2008 Robert Half Technology Salary Guide sees strong need for Web developers, business intelligence analysts, and network security administrators. Dan Cordero, a San Diego-based regional manager for IT recruiter Sapphire Technologies, who monitors the availability of tech jobs on a daily basis, agrees that .NET and Java programmers are very much in demand. The new media, investment and security industries have also been short-staffed, he says. "I would say I'm optimistic about 2008," he says.