The brawl over the true state of information and communications technology (ICT) employment has taken another twist with the Australian Information Industry Association's (AIIA) release of figures indicating the market is stabilising.

The AIIA said today results from the organisation's latest survey of salaries and remuneration packaging revealed that involuntary attrition - defined as redundancy or performance-related dismissal - fell to 5.2 percent over the last six months, down from 18 percent between August 2001 and August 2002.

The statement, from AIIA executive director Rob Durie, follows the Australian Computer Society's (ACS') release of a report claiming unemployment in the sector was running at nearly twice the national average. The claim drew a heated response from the Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Senator Richard Alston, who said official figures revealed a rise of 14,400, or 7.5 percent in the employment of ICT professionals in the year to November 2002 - the same period covered by the ACS figures.

Durie said while ICT salaries had declined since the late 1990s, the contraction was patchy and "never across the board". While salaries for some individual roles had slipped, most notably in the e-business field, salaries for programmers continued to march upward by as much as five percent.

He added "the doom and gloom merchants would have us believe that salaries and contracts have collapsed since the tech wreck.

"Our survey proves that while the ICT industry has contracted in terms of certain individual roles, in general, salaries have continued to grow, albeit at a slower rate".

Durie said the survey was collated from input received from 118 companies.

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