Is your job finally secure or will it be shipped offshore in 2012? While it’s impossible to predict the future, experts have been reviewing the data and they're bullish about the employment prospects for IT professionals next year. For example, InfoWorld’s Dan Tynan recently declared that it’s a great time to be in IT. He attributes his optimism to Gartner’s claim that global IT spending will rise by 7.1 percent, which is higher than the original estimates of a spending increase of just 5.6 percent. IT budgets were 3.55 percent of corporate revenues in 2011, compared to 3.5 percent of revenues prior to the recession. And a recent survey by the Society for Information Management (SIM) reveals that boosting productivity and cutting costs is the number four priority for CIOs in 2012. This had been their top priority over the last several years. In fact, Jerry Luftman the survey’s lead researcher and a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology said, "Companies aren't looking to IT as the first place to slice and dice." Two-thirds of the responding companies in the SIM survey have already shipped jobs offshore and very few plan to offshore additional jobs in 2012. Since the value of offshore contracts declined by 18 percent during the second quarter of this year, your job is probably safe, at least for the time being. But here’s the burning question: Will you get a raise in 2012? Maybe so, because some 94 percent of CIOs predict that their 2012 IT staff salaries will be greater than or equal to this year's level. In conclusion, Luftman said the overall findings of the SIM survey are that IT is a good place to be in the enterprise and that it's getting better. And after several tough years, that’s certainly welcome news for weary professionals.