Information technology is one of the newest industries and is still evolving at a rapid rate. There are many different IT careers - it has been said that there are as many as 300 options - and many ways into the industry. IT continues to provide a fairly stable source of income for permanent position holders and contractors. With the economic downturn, lower level of skills such as PC support and operators are less in demand, although IT managers, business systems analysts and project managers are more in demand than before. To survive the recession, companies have had to optimise their IT systems continually. Most have felt the recession as a lack of rise in salary levels, rather than redundancies or lack of opportunity. A skills shortage in the industry means that highly skilled candidates are still able to secure work with good companies and may find themselves with many choices.