CIO — The twin implosions of the housing and credit industries have had little impact on CIOs' fourth quarter hiring plans, according to a new survey released today by Robert Half Technology. In fact, IT executives in the finance, insurance and commercial real estate industries expect to do the most hiring in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Overall, 14 percent of the 1,400 CIOs polled by the staffing company plan to add jobs in the fourth quarter, down three percent from the third quarter of 2007. Just two percent intend to cut staff during that period, unchanged from the previous quarter. The remainder say they have no plans to add or eliminate jobs during the last quarter of the year.

CIOs who plan to beef up their staffs cite business growth as the key driver. They also point to an increased need for customer and/or end-user support and plans to implement new enterprise applications.

The IT jobs most in demand include Windows administrators, network administrators and database managers.

Robert Half's hiring survey comes hard on the heels of a grim employment report issued by the US. Labor Department on September 7. The Labor Department showed that 4,000 jobs were eliminated in August and sparked concerns about a recession.

Interestingly, respondents to a CIO.com poll about the impact of tighter credit conditions on 2008 IT budgets corroborated the confidence expressed by IT managers in the Robert Half hiring survey. Fifty-eight percent of poll respondents said they were not concerned about the credit crunch affecting their budgets, though 12 percent plan to change or eliminate some projects as a result.