"I had a lot of confidence that I was going to find something soon," Fellows said after moving here from Boston, where he worked for consulting company Zefer. "I interviewed with as many people as possible, and the very next day they were throwing job offers my way."

The story is a familiar one, from Manhattan's Silicon Alley to San Francisco's Media Gulch: While the demise of dot-com companies makes the headlines, employment continues to boom across the board for positions as diverse as accountants, lawyers, engineers and producers.

The unemployment rate in some technology niches is less than 1 percent, mocking the national rate of 4.1 percent in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Government studies also project that the top five of the 10 fastest-growing occupations between 1998 and 2008 will be related to technology. Computer engineers, support specialists, systems analysts, database administrators and desktop publishers are expected to see the largest salary growth.

To be sure, the consolidation of the new economy this year has not been free of pain. More than 22,000 technology workers have been told to pack their bags since December, according to one study, and the pace of cuts has only increased since technology stocks began their steep decline in April. More than 60 companies--including AltaVista, Qwest Communications International and Drkoop.com--have slashed their work forces.

Content companies and online retailers, such as Oxygen Media, Amazon.com and AllAdvantage.com, constitute the bulk of the layoffs, climbing to a sector record of 5,677 in October, according to a report by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The cuts are also beginning to seep into the wider tech world, affecting such stalwarts as Xerox and Lexmark International Group.

Yet unlike the dark days of the early '90s when large corporations like AT&T and IBM announced massive layoffs on the order of 40,000 jobs, today's cutbacks are hardly making a dent in the overall economy or in the psyche of those who are let go. In fact, many of those receiving pink slips exude optimism.

"The market is pretty good and there are a lot of opportunities out there. I am in no rush to get something," said 23-year-old Carlos Famadas, who was laid off at the end of September from consulting company Gen3 Partners. Confident that he would find work, he took the opportunity to stay home with his dog and take care of personal business for a month.

Such is life in this revolving-door job market. For all the recent pummeling the industry has endured on Wall Street, most technology companies continue to have a difficult time filling all their job openings. The steady closure of dot-coms and other companies does not mean that people have lost all viable employment options; they're just being shifted to other parts of the industry.

"Yes, the markets are jittery and you see individual companies that do better than others on some days," said Michaela Platzer, vice president of research at AeA, an industry group representing computer and technology companies. "But the bottom line is that companies are wrestling with not having enough skilled workers to meet their demand."

And as the industry creates new jobs at a breakneck pace, companies find themselves in a perpetual game of catch-up.

Even as the dot-com meltdown continues, other parts of the industry are still benefiting from the original enthusiasm the Internet generated for all technology stocks. Investor interest has shifted from consumer Web companies to other sectors, including optical networking, wireless, Internet infrastructure and business-to-business companies.

People who lost their jobs in content, e-tailing and other areas that have fallen out of favor are still hot commodities.

Rich Hampton, who last month lost his job as the lead technical designer at teen site Kibu.com, said prospective employers are "desperate." After posting his resume on Kibupeople.com, a site set up by the defunct company to help employees find work, he said, "I got tons of calls; I've talked to about 30 HR people."

"One man is calling from Los Angeles at night to get me to visit his company. Another person is calling from Chicago," said Hampton, who has become so confident that he is restricting his job search to the narrow confines of Fremont, Calif., a suburb of San Francisco and an extension of Silicon Valley.

Content sites like Kibu may come back into vogue as other sectors come to rely more on the Internet. For example, wireless companies are racing to bring content, financial services and shopping to their devices.

"There's going to be some interdependence between the different tech areas," AeA's Platzer said. "Already, we see that people had to come up with ways to send the information that is already there to wireless devices, creating a whole new set of demands for wireless and Internet infrastructure companies."

According to staffing and consulting company Management Decisions Inc., the tech industry will produce an estimated 1.5 million new positions next year alone. Moreover, because of the severe shortage of qualified workers, roughly half of those spots will go unfilled.

With those numbers, salaries are not likely to dive anytime soon.

"Generally speaking, there is still an immense shortage of the best talent, and compensation packages are staying the same," said Jeff Christian, chief executive of recruiting company Christian & Timbers. "They may not be escalating as fast as they were; they may have taken a breather."

The Internet's legendary lure of stock options, however, may not carry the same weight as in previous years.

"People are still looking for stock options, but they are not willing to take as many risks to get more options," said chief executive John Bongiorno of Myrecruiter.com, a staffing company based here that specializes in Net jobs.

Accordingly, those who have been laid off are giving more scrutiny to companies that come courting.

That's what Fellows did before signing on with another Net consultancy after his knee operation. And even though he was laid off by that company as well just this week, he's as upbeat as ever.

"I am still optimistic about finding work quickly," said Fellows, though he admits that he was a little unnerved by his second pink slip. "There is still a possibility of layoffs in any company, but there is a little bit more volatility in the Internet economy. I still think it is somewhat of a crapshoot."

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