Forrester estimates that IT staffs grew by only 0.3% last year, although salary and benefit increases brought up spending on staff to more than 4%.

Hiring should grow by 2% this year and then to 4% in 2013. Competition for workers will cause compensation to rise, which will increase staff spending to 7.2% next year.

The IT job market growth is either strong or weak, depending on what government data is used. Differences in IT job estimates are based on the decisions analysts make on what labor categories to include or not include in the estimate.

TechServe Alliance, which tracks government data monthly says that 15,000 IT jobs were added in March out of the 120,000 new jobs reported by the government. TechServe estimates the IT workforce now stands at 4.14 million.

Janco Associates, a research firm that tracks IT employment, looks a narrower segment of IT jobs, and reported a net increase of 4,900 seasonally adjusted jobs IT jobs in March.