The market might be in a slowdown, but that's not so for demand for enterprise application skills. That's according to the Foote Partners' IT Skills and Certifications Pay Index for the second quarter of 2008.

Among the 331 IT skills covered in the report, SAP skills have grown between 25% and 30% in value in the past six months. “Employers are feeling more pain than ever in their search for skilled and experienced SAP talent. We expect this to continue for the next year and a half, maybe longer,” said David Foote, co-founder, CEO and chief research officer of the company that bears his name. ERP’s popularity is one reason supply for this skill is tight.

Also hot are unified messaging, wireless networking, PHP, XML, Oracle, business intelligence and network security management skills. And over the past year, SANs, VoIP and virtualization posted pay gains.

As Foote notes, spikes occur when the gap between demand and skills supply widens. There are two primary reasons why that can occur, and it is rarely a decline in skills supply that causes gap fluctuations – it’s surging demand.”

By contrast, demand for specific IT certifications has softened considerably. However, a few networking, systems and database certifications have proven to be the exception. Popular certifications include ISC2’s Certified Information Systems Security Professional, ISACA’s Certified Information Security Manager, and Planet 3’s Certified Wireless Analysis Professional, Certified Wireless Network Administrator, and Certified Wireless Security Professional.

To purchase the report, click here.

Amy Schurr is the former managing features editor of Network World.