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Some say hiring of part-time IT workers has nowhere to go but up.

Kimberly Long, director of business development for Richardson-based AJACOM Corp. (www.ajacom.com), which custom develops client-server and Internet-related software for businesses and also offers staffing services for companies, said the software side has slowed dramatically from two years ago.

"We're definitely seeing a slowdown in the technology realm," she said. "We've seen our other staffing solution divisions at least maintain, but the [business] on the IT side has slowly plummeted."

The technical staff at AJACOM is primarily contract - often part time - workers, Ms. Long said, and the company has been able to take on fewer workers as AJACOM's non-IT clients have struggled with their own core business.

"Obviously, attorneys need administrative [technical] support internally to help process all the information [they receive],

and if they have less clients in need of their services, then they're going to also need less employees internally to support those needs," she said. "So it's really across the board."

While IT and telecom part-timers may be currently facing a slower job market than they're used to, at least one survey indicates that it's only a blip.

In a survey released in March, ePartTimeJobs estimated that the part-time job market will grow from 23 million workers now to perhaps as many as 84 million part-timers by 2020, with women dominant in the part-time field, about 69 percent.

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