Fears about the economy gave IT workers the jitters last month, causing job confidence to sink to a near-all-time low, according to the latest monthly phone survey by IT staffing and outsourcing firm Hudson.

Compared to a base score of 100, job confidence among workers in the IT and telecom sector fell 6.1 points to a score of 97.4, one of the lowest ratings among techies since Hudson began its monthly phone survey of 9,000 workers, including 400-plus techies, in December 2003. The lowest optimism score among techies was 93.2 in May 2005. The December score of 97.4 among techies was 12.4 points lower than the 109.8 rating those workers registered in December 2006.

Still, despite their doldrums, tech professionals were in a better a mood last month than workers in the other sectors that Hudson surveys, including financial services and accounting, healthcare, and manufacturing. Overall, the national job confidence index for all workers slipped 4.6 points, hitting a measly 87.3, a record low.

External economic factors and bad news in the mortgage industry were the reasons for the slippage in job confidence among all workers last month, including techies, said Paul Taylor, a Hudson VP, in an interview.

However, the mood among tech professionals doesn't seem to accurately reflect what's going on in terms of employers' budgets and hiring plans, he said. That's because 95% of line managers say their IT budgets are staying on target with previously set plans for hiring and spending, he said.

"IT spending is more focused and integrated with the business than ever before," Taylor said. There's been no drastic change in the demand of skills Hudson has been seeing from clients, he added. Web developers, project managers, business analysts, and ERP talent, especially around SAP, continue to be among the hottest skills sought by Hudson clients.

Also, despite job confidence hitting the skids in December, overall optimism among techies in 2007 was up slightly compared with 2006. IT and telecom workers rated their job confidence at an average of 110.3 during 2007, up from 109.6 in 2006.

Nationally, however, confidence among workers in all sectors fell a bit in 2007, to an average of 102.8 from an average of 103.7 in 2006.