IT jobs healthy, study says

There are more U.S. information technology jobs today than there were six years ago during the dot-com heyday, according to a recent study from the Association for Computing Machinery. The report, presented at Stanford University's Computer Forum last week, examined the global migration of software jobs, and its findings appear to dispel the myth that computer science jobs are moving overseas at a greater clip than they're being created by U.S. companies.

"There is a huge mismatch between perception and reality," said Rice University Professor Moshe Vardi, who co-lead the study and presented the findings, according to Stanford's news service. Backing up the case, figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that companies are creating new IT jobs as fast as or faster than they are exported overseas, according to Vardi.

The report forecasts that IT jobs will continue to grow as technology prevades largely non-IT industries such as healthcare and retail. Still, Vardi warned that the United States must invest in technology research and development to stay ahead of the curve. "We have to innovate or die."