Salaries could be going up next year in the Chattanooga area for technology professionals and accountants, according to a new report by Robert Half International, a company that tracks hiring trends among professional occupations.
Nine percent of chief information officers plan to add IT staff, while 8 percent of chief financial officers surveyed said they would take on new full-time accounting employees, the report found.
Chad Leibundguth, regional vice president for Robert Half, said area salaries would see a slight increase, in spite of a stagnant national economy.
"I think the Chattanooga market might have a few unique traits, because you've got some things happening there with Volkswagen moving in, and that has created some more demand," Leibundguth said.
According to raw survey data, Chattanooga IT salaries are set to rise between 3.27 and 3.88 percent for top earners while accounting salaries are set to rise anywhere from 2.87 percent to 4.1 percent for high-demand occupations.
"Companies are moving in, and there are some additional hiring needs," Leibundguth said.
Dr. Stan Davis, department head of accounting at UTC, agreed with the results of the survey, which included information from chief financial officers and chief information officers from across the nation.
"Recruiting slacked off a little last year, but has rebounded this year, and the demand does still seem to be there," he said.
Accountants remain in demand primarily because they record and analyze the core function of any business, ensuring that more money comes in than goes out, Davis said.
"The accounting function within an organization is required, so while it may be easy to slash other parts of a company when times are tight, you still have to have that function performed within your organization, especially within companies that are publicly traded," Davis said.
Employers who cut accounting staff risk "cutting off your nose to spite your face," he said, especially in light of paperwork complications from recent government regulation that has created a "job guarantee for accounting professionals."
While the practice of accounting is an old profession at the core of must businesses, information technology is growing due to its relative youth, said Dr. Joseph Kizza, head of the computer science department at UTC.
After examining the number of requests from community businesses for student interns or full-time hires, Kizza discovered that "we're at the point where we have no more students to provide to anyone," which is a good problem to have, he said.
To meet the insatiable industry demand for IT professionals, he's begun going directly to pre-college students, "trying to find a way of getting the message across to the community, and high schools, so that students know what's going on," he said.
Monty Wilson, chief information officer at UTC, said businesses look at IT as a "leveraging technology," where a small investment can pay big dividends in cost savings.
But the constant changes in technology and expensive training add to the cost, which is why qualified professionals are hard to find, Wilson said.
"You just have to invest in those folks whenever possible to keep up with the technology," he said.