Houston surpassed New York City as the as the largest IT service economy in the second quarter of 2008, according to the Q2 State of the Industry Report from OnForce, the world's largest marketplace for IT service professionals. Examining transactional data from the OnForce market, the report offers a detailed snapshot of IT service spending trends within the United States, broken down by state, city and IT categories.

Despite being ranked fourth in overall population, Houston had the greatest number of IT service events during the second quarter of this year. Climbing one spot from its second-place finish in Q1, Houston also topped Chicago, which retained its third-place ranking from Q1. In one of several surprises to emerge from the report, Las Vegas and Miami -- whose populations rank 28th and 43rd in the US, respectively -- rounded out the top five busiest IT service cities, ahead of larger cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Antonio.

In addition to the highest volume cities, the report also identified the top states by volume, where California, Florida, Texas, New York and Pennsylvania remained in the top five.

Additional highlights from the Q2 report include:

• Franklin, Tenn.; Warwick, R.I.; and Santa Ana, Calif., were the most expensive cities for IT service, at more than 2.5X the national average.
• Washington D.C., South Dakota and Alaska had the highest hourly rates for IT service among states, while Maryland, Maine and Montana were the least expensive states for IT services.
• VoIP continues to be the most expensive service category, actually increasing from Q1.
• Hourly rates for VoIP work were almost twice the average of all other IT categories in Q2, a substantial increase over its Q1 hourly rates.

The Q2 report reveals the fastest-growing IT service categories were Consumer Electronics, Point of Sale and VoIP. OnForce attributes this growth to an increase in the number of large rollouts in technologies such as POS kiosks, flat panel TVs and wireless networks. The adoption of such technologies in stores, restaurants, hotels and schools represents a tremendous growth opportunity for VARs and solution providers that have nationwide coverage.

The OnForce marketplace represents the largest concentration of IT service professionals and transactions around the country, with more than 13,000 registered service professionals in the marketplace.