IT workers may never again see the boom they rode to riches during the late 1990s technology-Internet bubble.

The move to shift IT-related work from the United States, Western Europe, Australia and other developed countries to vendors in emerging markets is an irreversible mega-trend, and the workforce changes that accompany the movement are not fleeting or temporal, warns Gartner Inc.

According to the research firm:

•	By year-end 2004, one out of every 10 jobs within U.S.-based IT vendors and service providers will move to emerging markets, as will one out of every 20 IT jobs within user enterprises (0.8 probability).
•	Although many CIOs and business leaders claim that offshore outsourcing permits them to reassign people to higher-value work, Gartner has seen few instances of that. In general, the offshore movement of IT-related work displaces jobs.
•	Through 2005, fewer than 40 percent of people whose jobs are moved to emerging markets will be redeployed by their current employers (0.8 probability).

Without an investment boom, "white knight" industries, new IT-led innovation or new ways of competing globally, the scenario for the technical workforce in developed nations looks bleak, Gartner concludes.

For example, Gartner says if it applies the assumptions above to the IT Association of America's 2003 count of 10.3 million IT practitioners in the US, preliminary analysis indicates that another 500,000 IT jobs realistically may disappear from the US by year-end 2004.