Looking for an IT job? You may be in luck. Nearly half of IT employers say they have open positions that they've had trouble filling during the first half of 2007, according to a new survey released on Wednesday by online job site, CareerBuilder.com.

Specifically, 47% of the 183 IT employers who participated in the online survey said they currently have open job positions for which they cannot find qualified candidates. That's up from 40% in December 2006.

Twenty-eight percent of IT employers said they plan to increase hiring in the second half of the year, and 40% say they're planning to hire about the same number of employees in the second half as they did in the first six months of the year.

To attract the new employees, half of the employers said they'd be willing to increase salary for the positions, compared with last year. And to keep existing staff from leaving their jobs, 74% of the employers say they're as likely to give raises this year as compared with 2006, and 18% are more willing to give raises this year than they were last year.

Meanwhile, based on a CareerBuilder.com survey of 253 IT workers, only 14% of employees admit they're actively looking for new jobs, although 56% say they're passively looking, meaning they're willing to consider a new job if they come across an opportunity .

CareerBuilder.com didn't ask IT employers what jobs they're trying to fill, says a company spokeswoman. However, IT employers posting job openings on the site are looking to fill positions for computer programming, software engineering and development, Web-related functions and systems analysis, she says.

As of last count on July 24, CareerBuilder.com had 73,085 IT jobs listed on its site by employers looking to fill positions, says the spokeswoman.