Has anyone been looking for a job and received feedback from recruiters since the beginning of this year about which skills are most in demand in the United States (preferably New York)?
I realize a similar question was asked in September 2008 but I'm specifically concerned with any updated information since that point in light of how much worse the economic/employment situation has become in the meantime.
This a general piece of advice, but if your skillset suits, try to get into defence. Small world, lots of friends and when recessions are on, does the government stop worrying about defence?
I'm in one of the only workplaces I know where no one is worried about their jobs due to the recession.
More than skill, experience. If you have 3 or 5 years of experience you're more likely to be fine. Of course the point is you skill matches your experience.
I believe that free open source solutions will benefit from recession. So, Linux, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby, [add your favorite here], etc. will rise, while competitive proprietary solutions will have harder times. Virtualization saves money, so it will continue to be a hot topic too.
Also, recession separates the essential fields from the merely "nice to have" skills - server administration won't go away as long as there are servers, but maybe companies will be more conservative on web page redesign and such things, that can be postponed to better times.