Despite the overall economic meltdown, there's good news for IT pros with green smarts --- your job skills will most likely be in demand next year, and you're not as likely as others to hurt by the economic crisis.

Computerworld reports that the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in Obama's stimulus package will spell good news for IT pros. The newspaper quotes David Foote of Vero Beach Fla.-based Foote Partners LLC, which analyzes IT hiring data, as saying "IT jobs are relatively safe in the aftermath of the economic meltdown compared to jobs in general." Foote says that even though 853,000 jobs were lost in the U.S. in October, IT jobs actually increased by 9,000.

Computeworld also quotes Robert J. McGovern, CEO of the career site JobFox Inc., as saying that Obama's stimulus package will create hundreds of thousands of IT jobs.

Where does Green IT fit into all this? At the same time that companies will be looking for IT pros, they'll be looking to cut costs overall. In addition, greenness has become a big factor in companies burnishing their public images. In both cases, IT pros can help --- they can cut power costs and reduce companies' carbon footprints, often in dramatic ways.

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So if you've got green IT credentials, make sure to highlight them on your resume. And if you don't have them, now is the time to get them.