"Clearly, an urgent demand for talent in several areas is eclipsing broad, knee-jerk reactions to reduce budgets and cut people, projects and purchases without thinking carefully about the consequences," Foote said. "It's about how smart they're spending what they have."

For instance, noncertified skills in management, methodology and process earned 5.6% more in pay, while pay for database skills increased by 2.9% and messaging and communications skills pay saw a similar increase of 2.8%.

As for certified skills, project management and architecture skills pay experienced a 3.1% increase in the last quarter (10% for the year) and IT security pay ticked upward by 0.8%. Pay for IT certifications for networking/internetworking skills grew 1.1% in the last part of 2008.

"The fact is that employers made mistakes in past downturns, huge miscalculations in the heat of cost-cutting that hurt them later on," Foote said. "Employers are obviously now aware that continuing to invest strategically in is the smartest thing they can possibly do to make it to the other side of this recession as stronger, undiminished enterprises."