The possible ban on outsourcing from India by New Jersey, Connecticut, Missouri, Maryland and Wisconsin, the looming United States-Iraq war, and a 'possible attack' by North Korea on the United States will have very little or no impact on the National Association of Software Services employment projections of the IT Software and Services Industry, says Kiran Karnik, president, Nasscom.

Despite the slowdown in the IT sector, the demand for software professionals in India is expected to increase to 1.1 million by 2008 as against an anticipated workforce of only 885,000, Nasscom said Friday.

Nasscom projected that the IT Software and Services Industry would employ 650,000 IT professionals by March 2003, a growth of 24.4 per cent from last year's employment of 522,250. Nasscom said of the total, almost 205,000 are working in the IT software exports industry; 160,000 in the IT enabled services; 25,000 in the domestic software market and 260,000 in user organisations.

Nasscom chairman Arun Kumar says offshoring is a big trend and there will always be a demand for people. But if the US-Iraq situation worsens, there definitely will be lesser businessmen travelling to India which in turn may have an impact on the employment projections and also on software exports, Kumar says.

"Currently the global markets are down only on speculation. People who have already entrusted jobs to Indian companies cannot take it back," says Kumar.

Nasscom says Indian companies should concentrate on ensuring they continue to deliver on time. Karnik agrees with Kumar. "If the war is short and sweet, there will be no impact. But if it is protracted and spilled over a long period of time, that would be a cause of worry,” he says.

Karnik too is concerned about the impact on travel the war could have. He says if travel stops for around two months, then the employment figures as well as the software export projections may have to be revised.

The annual industry survey on knowledge professionals in India focused on the total IT workforce in the country, the skill sets in demand and projections in IT workforce requirement till 2008.

Nasscom also announced that it would be conducting studies on the hiring patterns and skill set requirements for the industry on a quarterly basis. In addition to these studies, it will conduct a survey on “Total Reward Management” for IT Software and ITES-BPO sector in association with Hewitt Associates.

The survey highlights there was a pick up in the recruitment scene in the IT services sector from the second quarter of the year. The skills in demand were in the areas of software analysts, domain specialists, information security, integration specialists, database administrators, network specialists and communication engineers, data warehousing and semiconductor design.

Kumar said there were almost 200 personnel being hired every working day of the year in the ITES sector. Also, there is a shift away from hiring freshers to professionals with more domain specific skill sets and business analysts with programming skills.

About Nasscom's findings that hiring of new IT professionals was highest in south India at 44 per cent and lowest in the eastern region at 6 per cent, Karnik told rediff.com that states like West Bengal should follow the Kerala model and indulge in more aggressive marketing.

Other highlights of the Nasscom survey include:

• The overall median age of the software professionals was about 26.5 years
• 79 per cent of software professionals in software companies were men, whereas 21 per cent were women. However, this ratio is likely to be 65:35 (male:female) by the year 2005. This ratio is reversed in the ITES sector where the ratio of males to females in 35:65
• There was an average of 8 per cent rise in basic salary during 2002
• 76 per cent of all software professionals had a graduate degree or above 

The survey also highlighted the potential shortfall of 235,000 people by 2008 if current trends of intake of technical talent into the IT workforce continue.