Canadian information technology companies hired almost no new employees during the industry bust of 2001, according to the first-ever Survey of Information Technology Occupations done by Statistics Canada.

Four of five IT firms in Canada did not hire any new employees in the six months prior to the period the survey was done in late 2002. Just 16 per cent of Canadian companies involved in computer systems design hired a single employee and only 4 per cent hired four or more new employees.

At the peak of the high-tech boom in the first quarter of 2001, there were 650,000 employees in Canada's computer and telecommunications industry. A year later, employment in the same sector had dropped to 586,000 and the unemployment rate among IT workers had jumped from 3.9 per cent to 6.6 per cent.