What is wrong with the way this article is written?? It's backwards somehow, but I can't seem to put my finger on it. The writer doesn't make himself clear to me until the very end: "...over a third less IT jobs advertised than in Q3 2002.
For the whole of 2002, the IT jobs market fell by 76 per cent. The Midlands suffered an 80 per cent fall in IT job vacancies while Central London racked up a 62 per cent decline in advertised IT vacancies."

How come he didn't say, for ex., that more IT positions are filled than in 2001? He could have said, then, that the IT business is therefore booming. Though given the article's title, I don't think that's the slant he wanted to put on the situation. To me (an outsider both culturally and IT-ally), if he had a point to make, he didn't make it. WAS he trying to say that the IT business is in great shape? If not, why bother to give the stats? He did make it clear that it's hard to get a job in IT in the UK, but. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I can't tell, really, from this piece. Are there thousands of qualified IT people who are starving because they can't get jobs? Is he trying to say that companies don't have enough IT people and should be hiring more but aren't? Grr.
I realize that my frustration may not be shared by other readers, particularly in the UK. I also realize that if the writer were specifically addressing an IT audience, his point(s) would no doubt have been perfectly clear to that group. But as far as I know, the Register is not an IT-targeted publication.