Pasadena, California -- (SBWire) -- 10/25/2010 -- Data gathered from the Bureau of Labor Statistics latest employment report shows that there was a net gain of only 6,500 jobs in the IT field in September.

Although the number seems small, CEO David Foote of Foote Partners says that the government still counts only 4 million people as being in the IT industry. Most industry organizations put the figure between 20 to 25 million. The main reason hiring in the IT industry has not picked up pace according to most experts is that companies are spending money on upgrading and replacing their equipment.

A result of this trend is that when companies do need people for their projects, they are increasingly using online outsourcing companies. One such company, oDesk, has recorded a million hours of work in August compared to an average of 400,000 per month in 2009.

Another sign of the increasing demand for outsourcing and consulting in IT is the BLS data which says that management and technical consulting services accounted for 68 percent of the new jobs from June to September.

But CEO A. Harrison Barnes of InformationTechnologyCrossing is convinced that there are still thousands of regular fulltime IT jobs available. “While outsourcing of IT work has definitively increased, IT firms still need fulltime employees to be on site to do the work.” Barnes’ firm has been able to compile a list of over 44,000 IT jobs.