[Alberta's Child]

You raise a good point, but I don't believe the deflationary factors you described have as much influence as you think. I belong to an advisory group for an engineering school, and just last week I had a long conversation with someone whose company can't even fill positions that pay $40k-$50k starting salaries to people with two-year degrees in tech-related fields.

My biggest problem in my company is that I have a hard time finding people who are flexible and broadly educated -- not just "trained" to do tasks that may be obsolete next month.

[sarasmom]

Y2K fallout.

CEO's remember being essentially "fiscally raped" by IT "Professionals".

Why hire direct, when people learned to make do with the expensive consultants?

I am not a CEO, but I have learned a bit of IT by osmosis.
Pay the consultant for overall operations, and hire the recent high school grad who knows how to just unplug/restart the Internet connection. /sarcasm//