"Anyone who can show up to work with a clean shirt is guaranteed a job," said Ken Peffers, chairman of the MIS department at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV). There are now 200 students enrolled in the MIS undergraduate program at UNLV, but Peffers said the local labor market could easily support 400 students in his program.

If you are in IT and head to Las Vegas for work, Denny Frey, vice president of IT at Boyd Gaming Corp., said your luck will probably be very good. "Anybody who comes in here with any kind of technical background will definitely find a job," said Frey, whose company runs 17 casinos in Las Vegas and other states.

Frey and some of his IT peers advise UNLV on training needs. He said a variety of technical skills is needed in this desert city, including telecommunications, networking, cabling and program management. The gaming industry, in particular, needs database marketers, data warehouse skills and business intelligence administrators, said Frey.

Some IT skills in Vegas are system-specific, especially those needed for the IBM System i, which is used at Boyd and other gaming companies. To help meet the need for System i skills, IBM is helping UNLV this fall to get Series i training under an initiative that includes new courses.

Frey said the need for technical skills is a result of rapid growth in the area. In the 20 years he has been in Las Vegas, its population has grown from 600,000 to almost 2 million people. But many of those arriving are hunting jobs in the service industry, not IT.