Advice for IT professional looking to move back to MN (home, job market)

[queenswake]

I'm a web applications developer. 9 years of experience with both J2EE and ASP.NET.


1) Based on the job postings I am seeing, the IT job market seems to be picking up steam there. A year ago, all I was seeing with temp-to-hire and contract work. There are a lot more Full-time positions now. Is it true that things are good again?

2) What kind of trends are you seeing in terms of outsourcing, H1Bs, etc? Is work starting to come back to the state instead of leaving the country?

3) Between J2EE and ASP.NET, which one do you think has the most jobs and has the best future for the Twin Cities area? I'm just trying to figure out which one to focus on. Right now I do ASP.NET but could switch back to the Java side of things.

4) What are the crucial, hot skills to brush up on or learn in preparation? There's so much to keep up with that I need to figure out what to focus on. I'm assuming Agile. Is there a big push for Flex, WPF on the front ends? Sharepoint? Where do you see things heading for a lot of the local companies?

5) What kind of salary range am I looking at with 9 years of development experience and BS Computer Science. 75K?

Thanks for the advice. I'm about to give up crazy money and job security here in DC to move back home and want to make sure I gather a lot of information to consider before I make the jump. Moving back to Minnesota is worth the risk!