I can't really answer job availability since I'm probably not from around where you're around.
IT (or IS, or whatever) these days is split into two basic functions - running things (aka keeping the lights on) and changing things (aka projects).
From my experience, the outsourcing can happen in two ways.
1. When it comes to supporting an already mature system or infrastructure where the higher skilled project people and/or consulting firms will then download the information they learnt/developed to a lower skilled and lower costing group of people.
2. When it comes to starting up a new project where your existing staff is already too busy keeping the lights on, they're not skilled in new technology and/or you need a convenient scapegoat if the whole thing goes fubar. That's when you look outside to get people.
Most corporations have a mix of both at different ratios but ultimately any role except an executive can be outsourced.
Most of IT is split into two types of roles: infrastructure and applications.
For infrastructure, you're looking at an array of engineers and admins, usually divided into specialty groups (security, firewalls, VOIP, UNIX servers, e-mail, etc.). Chances are on infrastructure roles, you'll work with products and vendors more since you won't be "inventing" your own firewall.
For software, you're looking at roles like development, QA, business analyst, database admin, and usually some kind of support person (support analyst, help desk analyst, etc.)
On both sides, you'll find project managers, architects - those people who are supposed to glue the two groups of people together to find some kind of solution and organize it into a deliverable schedule. There are also other support roles like IT auditors, etc.
Unless you work in the most rigid of organizations, you'll likely be doing something of everything. For example, as a developer, you may program things but you might find you need to talk to the business partner who requested the change in the first place. Or if you're a business analyst gathering requirements, you need to hang around during user acceptance test to validate the user's response to the final product.
Pay is really pretty wild and there are always instances of superstars. You could be paid $30K a year testing stuff 10hrs/day or you could be paid 500 GBP/day but all you're doing are tedious Excel macros. But in general, project managers and architects get higher pay. Then amongst your group, larger organizations usually have a lead (i.e. a business analyst lead) who is paid more. Those who do the most repetitive work like a tester or a desktop support engineer, etc, usually get paid the least.
In general, if you come in as a consultant you get paid more - consultants also brag about their better taxation structure since they get paid through their own corporations. Not sure if that matters to you. For full-time employees, you'll only be looking at 6 figures when you get close to the first rung of management (an IT Manager, Application Development Manager, Infrastructure Manager of some kind). A lot of times your consultants will be paid more than an entry level manager. Try typing in some positions into
payscale.com to see if they're in your appetite.
What kind of pressures you feel in IT depends on what kind of company you work at. If you're in a high tech product company, you serve external customers where your days will be spent getting pressure from sales to develop or deliver xyz widget to customer A. (i.e. Cisco, Accenture, Oracle, etc.). Usually the structure here are organized around products and activities are tracked closely with clients (i.e. you fill in a billable timesheet of what you did for which client and your departments are XYZ Widget Department, ABC Service Group)
If your company produces things but they're not technology related, you're likely going to be servicing internal customers. Companies either have a centralized IT department organized by discipline (i.e. VP of Quality Assuarance, VP of Project Management, etc.) or they'll have IT silos that are embedded into other departments. So Marketing would have their own IT, HR would have their own, etc. And if you were to work in Marketing, for example, you would focus on their projects and services. In here, the most rewarding thing may not be you are in charge of 4 systems, but you are in charge of the $60MM of invoices that flow through your electronic feeds each month.
Whether you enjoy IT really depends on your personality. I find the vast majority (I'd say 80%+) of IT people are task driven. A good characterization is using the
DISC model - nearly all IT people I know are high D or high C folks, or both. Since both personality types enjoy solving problems, albeit in different manners, they enjoy IT the most.
All of the above comments about IT getting a bad rep is for the most part true. Usually you're asked to meet impossible deadlines ("Uhh so based on our project plan, we should have started the project 3 weeks ago, so now we need to work all weekends to make up for it") or meet vague objectives ("Make the site look great!") or by the time you finish something, the stakeholders who've asked for it or the business opportunity you're pursuing are long gone.
Probably the thing you want to ask yourself is if you're content being in a support role (aka overhead). Like HR or Finance, you're ultimately just there to support the raison d'etre of the business (law office, civil service, defense contractor, toolmaker, pizza maker). So if you have higher aspirations to be a game changer in your career and you're not working in a product-driven company like Apple, the limitations of the job and the above frustrations, may drive you away from an IT career.
