Back in 1999, calling yourself a Java programmer was a license to print money, and Marty Trujillo was happy to collect. But the freelance coder had a lot less luck last year, working about 60% of the time at rates well below what he used to make.

This year, he expected to get two or three weeks off after finishing a contract project at his last employer. "But there was no break. I ended the last job on Friday and started the new one on Monday," says Trujillo, who was placed at his new gig at Automatic Data Processing Inc. by IT staffing firm Anteo Group LLC. The biggest kicker: His pay rates are much higher than a year ago.

Trujillo's experience is reflected in the fact that IT unemployment figures are at their lowest level since early 2001--offering the latest data point in a confusing and often contradictory picture of the health of the job and career outlook for IT professionals.

Unemployment among IT workers averaged 3.7% for the four quarters ended March 31, according to InformationWeek's analysis of the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Average IT unemployment for the same four-quarter period a year earlier hit a post-boom high of 5.5%.

Steve Novak has seen the effect as CIO of Kirkland & Ellis, a 1,000-attorney law firm with about 130 full-time, part-time, and contract IT staff. Two years ago, a posting on a job board would generate 300 resumés, many of them not fitting the qualifications, Novak says. Today, a posting gets about a dozen resumés.

Novak hopes the recent uptick is a sign of equilibrium returning to the IT field after a tech boom and bust, and that it will lure people back to the profession. As his IT team sorts through the options for giving lawyers the mobility to work anywhere around the world, he finds the pace of change and complexity of technology choices among the most challenging he has seen in two decades in IT. "The biggest concern I have is people will no longer view IT as a long-term career path," Novak says. "Two years ago, with all the downsizing, that was a leap of faith."

It still takes some faith. The immediate employment picture may have improved, but long-term worries about competition with low-cost countries and job losses from automation and outsourcing are well founded. And while recent hiring may have people moving into--or returning to--IT careers, the workforce is far from where it was a few years ago.

The IT workforce, which covers people employed or seeking IT work, averaged 3.5 million for the four quarters ended in March. That's about 37,000 more than at the end of 2002, when the workforce bottomed out. The dark side to that: More than 100,000 Americans dropped out of the IT labor force in late 2001 and 2002, and almost 70% haven't returned.

For many of the unemployed, it will be a struggle to find positions, especially if companies take the same hiring approach as Virtual Care Provider Inc. The company, which provides IT services to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, has been hiring several IT pros a month for six months. But Virtual Care Provider is only hiring people with four-year college degrees, and it looks for other formal training such as certification and credentials. The company's approach leaves some people out of the running, says Loren Claypool, VP and managing director. He believes that's true in the larger job market as well. "The person who's self-educated, kind of the jack-of-all-trades, is getting squeezed," Claypool says.