[Sigia-l] The value of an IA

[Christopher Fahey]

Tim wrote:
> Is this the case in your area?
>
http://jobsearch.monster.com/jobsearch.asp?cy=us&q=%22information%20architec
t%22&re=112&lid=483&refine=1 
> Minneapolis/St. Paul is the 5th largest media market, and there 
> are 3 job postings containing the string "information architect".  

I don't share your cynicism about this. If you do a similar search for
"graphic designer" in Minneapolis/St. Paul, you get only 8 results. That
seems like an appropriate ratio of designers to IAs. 

In New York (limiting the job search to exclude, say, manufacturing or
pharmaceutical project managers), I get the following picture:

   "Information Architect": 18
   "Graphic Designer": 60
   "Project Manager": 419
   "Product Manager": 60

These also seem like healthy ratios to me, even given the likelihood that
there are synonym issues (there are, for example, 5 "interactive designer"
postings, 3 are for HTML/Flash people, the other two are essentially
describing the IA job). I don't see any trend except a general slow, tepid
emergence from 5 years of national economic stagnation. We're certainly not
where we were 5-6 years ago, but from my anecdotal perpsective, lots of IAs
who spent the last few years doing non-IA work are now finding opportunities
to do IA again. The job market is getting pretty competitive for both
employees and employers, and IAs are definitely coming back. Perhaps New
York is ahead of the curve here, I don't know. 

-Cf

Christopher Fahey
____________________________
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http://www.behaviordesign.com