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January 8, 2010 - Dice.com, a career Web site for technology professionals and employers, issued its employment report for January 2010. As of January 4, 2010, there were 48,751 jobs available in technology. Of those, 28,142 were full-time, 23,590 were contract, and 1074 were part-time positions.

Based on the number of jobs posted by ZIP code as of January 4, New York/New Jersey and Washington DC/Baltimore are the metro areas reporting the most openings, with 6,016 and 5,857 jobs, respectively. Other top metro areas posting openings included Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Philadelphia and Seattle.

In December, a Dice survey found that the hiring expectations of technology recruiters and hiring managers had improved slightly over the prior six months. The survey found that 45 percent of respondents expected flat to increasing hiring plans for January through June of 2010. However, 48 percent of respondents foresaw cutbacks in hiring. According to the report, this number represents a significant improvement from this past June, when eight in 10 employers reported decreased hiring expectations.

“It’s still a mixed and uncertain hiring environment and challenges will persist in 2010. However, we’ve seen applications per job moderate slightly from the first quarter of this year, as well as the job count on Dice moving up from its low,” Tom Silver, SVP, North America of Dice, said in a statement. “To us, these tentative improvements in supply and demand indicate the market for technology professionals is leveling out.”

Technology professionals can look to increased hiring activity in the health care, finance and government sectors. Within these industries, more than eight in 10 respondents of the Dice survey indicated that they would be hiring at least one position in the next three months.

The outlook isn’t all positive, however. Technology professionals shouldn’t expect better pay or a speedy hiring process. For new hires, nine in 10 companies reported that salaries are flat to down as compared to last year. Additionally, 50 percent of hiring managers indicated that the time to fill a position is still longer than this time last year.

Julie Langenkamp is editor-in-chief of Information Management. She can be reached at julie.langenkamp@sourcemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JulieLangenkamp.