NEW CANAAN, Conn. – Credit union managers faced with hiring and keeping qualified IT help may find it easier and less expensive for some positions but harder for the hotter specialties, such as information security and network administration. According to Foote Partners LLC, a research firm which regularly gathers information from more than 42,000 employees at more than 1,850 organizations in North America and Europe, the movement of jobs to lower-paying countries is having a continuing effect. “For the fourth quarter in a row, offshoring of IT labor is making onshore skill supplies somewhat less important, resulting in lower pay for IT workers in a number of positions,” says David Foote, president and chief research officer for Foote Partners (www.footepartners.com). One area in particular he cited was application programming, which has seen a lot of work outsourced to sites in India and Pakistan, among others. For example, base pay for both non-certified applications programming and enterprise applications development skills declined 2% in the first quarter of 2004 and between 19% and 21% over the past two years. Applications development certifications have lost nearly 15% of their value in the past two years. Average median premium bonus pay across all 86 surveyed non-certified skills declined in the year ending April 1, down 2.1% to an average 6.6% of base pay at the median, Foote says. Overall non-certified skills pay has fallen nearly 16% since 2001. Webmasters and Internet certifications also are losing premium value. Areas that Foote says continue to be hot include security, Linux, XML and Web services, voice-over IP, wireless, enterprise project management, Web-enabled analytics and management applications, and storage, an emerging specialty. For instance, the popular CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) designation has increased 44% in terms of premium bonus pay since 2002, 18% in the last year, according to Foote's research. Other designations credit unions might find themselves paying extra for include Project Management Professional, Certified InfoSys Security Professional, Certified InfoSys Auditor, Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert, Citrix Certified Enterprise Administrator, GIAC Security Expert, Microsoft Certified DBA, Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, Master Certified Novell Engineer, Oracle Certified Professional/DBA, Cisco Certified Enerprise Administrator, GIAC Certified Windows Security Administrator and Microsoft Certified Trainer.