Tech Employment Drops Sharply In 2004 557
Cryofan writes "According to Information Week, the lastest Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows that
the number of Americans calling themselves IT professionals has decreased by nearly 160,000 in the last 3 years, and the number of programmers, analysts, and support specialists has fallen 15% since the first six months of 2004.
According to IT World, the number of employed Software Engineers fell by 15% from April to July of 2004 (from 856,000 to 725,000)."
A lot of people weren't qualified to be IT... (Score:5, Informative)
I'd suspect thats the biggest group of people no longer in IT. I have most visibility in design and software development these days, but I'm sure the same is true for network/system administration.
There's not necessarily anything wrong with it, either. Most of the people I've known who did the major career shift after being layed off are much happier now. In a market where the people getting the jobs are reasonably qualified, its got to be hard to go to work knowing you can't really do what you need to well.
Re:yeah, maybe in 50 years it creates more jobs (Score:3, Informative)
You see, that is exactly the problem. You want to wait for a great job to find YOU. It doesn't work that way for most people. This is pacivity, and avoids taking responsibility for your own employment.
I have been too busy finding ways to create my own opportunities, both within my job and by starting other businesses. Just sold one of the three businesses I had started over the last 7 years (other two about broke even) and employs a few people. No one "gave" me that opportunity, I created it with the help of the wife, WHILE I held a real job. Oh, the job I have, I have been at for over 10 years, and I started out as a low level tech. Suffice it to say there are a lot more zeros in my check now, as I am in a position now that did not exist, but I created.
Success is not a RIGHT. It is earned through taking risks and working your ass off. Not every plan pans out, but I would rather fail trying than sit around and wait for somebody to "give" me a good job.
Re:Get a Democratic President (Score:5, Informative)
Private employment has decreased 1.8 million under the Bush adminstration.
I can't figure out how to link to these other statistics directly, but go here [bls.gov] and choose "Total Private Employment - Seasonally Adjusted" or whatever.
Re:I wish they would have broken down the numbers (Score:3, Informative)
You obviously haven't been in college for a while/ever. Nowadays(at least at the good schools) that only describes the first half of your education. The 2nd half, while still involving some lectures, also involves a lot of different hands on problems, and usually doing internships/co-ops/whatever. Before I graduate with my bachelors, I will have had about 2 years experience. However, the base that my education has given me will help me throughout my career....
Re:The rates sound low ... (Score:2, Informative)
One of the problems with government and politics is that they don't count unemployment accurately. For instance, if you make $90k/yr in some tech-field and are laid off and the only job you can find is as a secretarial admin for $28k/yr, you're still considered fully-employed.
If you are on unemployment and it runs out before you find an appropriate job oppertunity, you do not count as unemployed (even though you very much ARE unemployed!).
Overall, this administration has overseen a greater job LOSS in the last four years combined than they have in jobs CREATED. And we're still seeing something like 300,000 immigrants into this country per month - so who knows how many of the 32,000 jobs created in the last month were actually filled by American workers?
The whole thing is frustrating. It's most incredibly frustrating to dedicate your life to a company for many years and then have them lay you off in a heartbeat and toss you aside like you are a rotton slice of lunch meat. Even more so when your politicians are gloating about how great the economy and job market is. The job market is never good when you're unemployed and having a hard time finding oppertunities. I've been in the same company fully employed for a decade and I've never been through anything like this before. The world is a very different place than it was in the 90's and while some are used to this cycle, many of us are not. And many of us wonder if it's still part of a cycle or an entirely new behavior since a lot of things changed after 9/11.
A Colossus With Weak Knees (Score:5, Informative)
A Colossus With Weak Knees [vdare.com]
By Paul Craig Roberts
If George Bush [vdare.com] and John Kerry [vdare.com] were aware of the problems that await the next president, they would be vying to throw the election, not to win it.
Job loss at home and failure abroad have already written the script which will sweep away the next administration.
Recession could return by the inauguration before the economy ever regains the jobs lost to the 2001 recession. Second quarter 2004 economic growth came in 20% less than expected. The consumer is showing weakness, and crude oil prices have reached record highs. [starbanner.com] Personal savings remain low by historical standards.
On August 3 the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that seasonally adjusted real per capita incomes declined in June to levels below those reached in April. Total personal real spending declined 0.9% in June to the level of last February.
As the Bureau of Labor Statistics made clear in its July 30 report, the US economy is suffering not only from weak job growth but also from a loss of better paying jobs.
Only 65% of the 5.3 million workers who were laid off from long term jobs [vdare.com] during the first three years of President Bush's administration were reemployed by January 2004. That means only about 3.5 million of the 5.3 million laid off workers were able to find new jobs during two years of economic recovery.
Of those who found new jobs, 57%--about 2 million workers--took jobs paying less than their previous positions. About 1.2 million of the workers who found new jobs experienced pay cuts of 20% or more.
It is really disturbing that this job loss may have occurred in the absence of a recession. The conventional definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. However, on July 30 the Bureau of Economic Analysis released the revised GDP data for 2001, and the recession, as conventionally measured, has disappeared. The revised data does not show two consecutive negative quarters, and for 2001 the economy grew 0.8%. Did we experience not only a job loss recovery [vdare.com], but also a job loss nonrecession?
There was no recession in the second quarter of this year, but BLS data show 131,000 fewer American computer software engineers employed in the second quarter than in the first quarter of 2004--a decline of 15% in three months. Employment of computer scientists and systems analysts declined by 51,000 in the second quarter. Employment of computer programmers fell 16,000.
Despite the horrendous job loss, the unemployment rates for software engineers, computer scientists and programmers fell, which suggests that technical professionals are discouraged [vdare.com] and have ceased to search for jobs in their occupations.
The decline in high-tech professions in the US is also reflected in the collapse in computer engineering enrollments in America's premier engineering schools. Over the past several years, M.I.T., Georgia Tech, and UC Berkeley have experienced computer engineering enrollment declines [vdare.com] of 43%.
More unprecedented bad news comes from the Internal Revenue Service. For the first time ever, the real incomes of Americans shrank for two consecutive years. In 2002 Americans repor
Re:Disappearing IT jobs...Duuuuuhhhh!!!! (Score:2, Informative)
We were on a voluntary program that began here in Greensboro, NC (about 300k population, metro area of about 1 million within 45 miles). We were "authorized" to purchase stolen goods, up to $100. They paid us back for those stolen goods, up to $100. By working with us, they got their goods, they got the criminals along with our getting their DL # and a signature proving the guy had possession. So no, they didn't hassle us, we worked together. Its not always that way, but it was for us.
Did you have to report every item?
Yes, all computerized, including the buyer, DL number, singature, description, serial and model number. They picked up a disk every week to put in their database. If they called and said "Item #434394 may be hot", we put it back.
Did they steal stuff as I have hear that cops will do "We need this for a case and we are taking it" type stuff?
No, we were reimbursed up to $100 for every item they took. This was paid for by drug seizure money they got.
In a nutshell, if "Bob" stole a TV, brought it to us, we bought it for $50, then it was discovered to be stolen, the police solved their case for $50 (which is dirt cheap for detective work) and we were respected. I expect this type of setup to become more popular in other cities soon. It is already being used as a model in some other cities in North Carolina.
This allowed us to buy and sell freely without hassles, to remain in good graces with the police, and offer our customers the reassurance that all items were already checked against a database of stolen goods, so if they bought from us, it was very likely NOT stolen. Win-win-win situation. Our only risk was items over $100, although they have paid more than $100 before, but rarely. Most items we buy were under $100. We really liked this policy.
Not the case in Austin... (Score:2, Informative)
From the article:
this jives with what I've seen--a rise in software engineer jobs. My guess is that many of the less-skilled IT positions are being simply eliminated or outsourced.Re:A Colossus With Weak Knees (Score:3, Informative)
As a Republican I'm in the odd position of hoping that Kerry wins and organized labor holds his feet to the fire in an attempt to keep some jobs that are a shade more advanced than frycook inside the United States. I think that the coming recession, fueled and deepened by the continuing outflows of jobs and capital, will be the biggest issue for the next administration. Bush is clearly unwilling to do much of anything about it, indeed, he seems almost unaware. We're so tied up in WTO and all of that other bullshit that I'm unsure anyone can do much about it but at least Kerry seems inclined to try.
Re:Thankfully... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:A lot of people weren't qualified to be IT... (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of commercial software work can be done by any available labor pool with good skills and good work habits. So guess what? Many of the jobs are going to the cheaper labor pools producing acceptable results. Thi is a logical outcome of global free trade. Combine that with an extremely bad market and you have more than sufficient explanation for what we are seeing. Add in a seriously anti science and anti-technology administration and there is no need to posit that all those left jobless simply weren't worthwhile hackers to start with.
The above is not "informative". It is the old blame the victim and assume we the employed are so much better than that. It assumes that having a job is some kind of statement of moral worth or software savvy.
Re:It's just "Turtles All The Way Down," huh? (Score:3, Informative)
He's saying you have the ability to take a risk and start up your own business.
So American universities should stop offering courses in Computer Science and concentrate on business courses? Not everyone wants to run their own business, and I doubt there is a need for 100,000 new IT businesses this year.