Nate Perkins, CEO of DLSG Resource, an IT recruitment firm, said project managers were the low-hanging fruit in the cost-savings harvest. In makes sense to ditch project managers considering most projects are now at a rusty standstill. What few project managers have been retained are those with technical expertise.

Todd Harootyan, senior IT Recruiter at Hudson IT said his firm is seeing companies “rely more on the technically-oriented IT professionals to ‘keep the lights on,’ and to evaluate and implement technical cost-cutting IT projects.” Conversely, many companies, he said, are transferring responsibilities associated with project management over to the technically-oriented IT professionals.

The question is, then, whether this shift of duties will remain in play long after economic recovery? Without a doubt, this shift will hold for years in some companies, say experts, but not all. Primarily this will be the case in firms that do not have a mature project management culture―firms that do not traditionally do a lot of internal IT development work and thus consider project management as overhead.

"Lacking the experience with a high-quality project management process, they figure that money spent directly on IT production staff, i.e. developers, testers, etc. is a better value than hiring a project manager whose output is difficult to measure,” said Andy Valenti, president of Valenti Partners.

Prospects for project managers look considerably better in firms with a higher focus, however. Valenti said to look for increased opportunity in companies where project management is considered crucial―companies doing business with the federal government; businesses that are highly regulated like healthcare; and, in companies that have adopted a project management or "quality" culture. Also firms that have made extensive and deep cuts in their IT staff during this recession and are now hiring contract PMs will restaff at the first opportunity, he said. In short, the companies that must innovate or meet strict regulations will elevate project managers to a valued position. Those that don’t, won’t.

Where the Jobs Are

Mark Langley, executive vice president and COO of Project Management Institute points to the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics (USBL) for clues on industries that will resume hiring project managers first. The USBL predicts strong job growth for project managers in construction through 2014 but he said the outlook is much stronger for product managers in industries with strong growth prospects, such as high-tech and bio-tech.

Healthcare clinics are already experiencing growth in demand for project managers to implement electronic medical records (EMR) and electronic health records (EHR) systems. Shannon Salter, practice manager for Hudson IT said medical clinics have been preparing for EMR/EHR for the past four years and federal stimulus money and possibly healthcare reform will increase demand even more. Despite the promising news in certain industry pockets, competition for these jobs is likely to remain tough and pay may be lower than pre-recession rates.

The recession has hit mid-level managers the hardest, folks at the level of director or vice president. Valenti said many of these have solid general management/supervisory skills but lack extensive hands-on experience in a technical specialization. As a result, they are reinventing and re-titling themselves as "project managers" using their severance to prepare for the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

As a result, “they have increased the quantity of project managers available for hire, although not necessarily the quality” he said.

This has kept rates down and competition fierce for the few projects that are being initiated. “With this glut of project managers on the market, hiring managers basically can hire a project manager for $40-50/hr where as two years ago the same project manager would go for $80 or more,” he said.

The key to netting the top slots at top dollar will be in the project manager’s ability to actually solve problems and meet expectations. The best jobs will go to the project managers that have a portfolio proving a past history in solid deliverables. But there are a few new differentiators on the horizon that can boost a project manager’s value as well.

“Our world faces daunting economic, energy, and environmental problems and companies will be looking for project managers that can handle those issues along with the standard project issues,” said Charles Pellerin, formerly NASA’s director of Astrophysics where he oversaw $750 million in contracts per year, launched a dozen satellites, and formed the team that successfully repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. Currently, Pellerin is author of How NASA Builds Teams http://www.amazon.com/How-NASA-Builds-Teams-Scientists/dp/0470456485, a book about creating environments that stimulate collaboration.