IT Employment Returns to Pre-Recession Levels

IT Employment Returns to Pre-Recession Levels

In 2005, employment of information technology (IT) workers returned to the levels that existed in 2001-the year of the last U.S. recession. According to the National Association of Computer Consultant Businesses (NACCB), in 2005, national IT employment climbed to 3,527,700-returning to the level of IT employment in 2001 when employment stood at 3,527,100.

http://www.globalknowledge.com/training/customgo.asp?id=12907&pageid=29

 

I wonder how many of those positions are held by Visa Holders?

 

actually I would like to know what their definition of IT is. I mean.. maybe help desk jobs have risen whilst programmers are laid off.

 

Interesting Salary Survey

Here's an interesting survey I found:

2005 Information Security Salary and Career Advancement Survey

http://www.sans.org/salary2005/

It was conducted between October 20 and November 18, 2005. They provided detailed answers to thirty questions about their compensation, their background, their employer, their certifications, their job responsibilities and satisfaction and what it takes to get promoted.

 

VISA holders make a majority of these jobs. A lot of these have been Bangalored.

 

Employment may have but salaries have not. It may be possible to get a job in Muncie as in IT making 45k..That is a far cry from making 90-120k in Boston of California back in 2001. Measuring only the amount of jobs created is misleading and an insufficient, measuring salary in relation to amount of jobs created would be a better measure because it has a far greater effect on discretionary income and the economy. Lets face it Wal-Mart creates a ton of jobs, the problem is most of those jobs are on the low end of the pay scale.

 

By all reports, salaries have *not* gone down. Until the past year they were lagging the annual gains that IT generally gets; however, they were still within average salary gains across all industries. Last year, IT salaries were once again growing at a faster clip than the industry average.

 

I agree - the outsourcing comment is "everyone knows" BS.

 

Indeed salaries as a whole may not have gone down in the macro sense... there are VAST regional differences that come into play; Silicon Valley is an excellent example of this. Also peripherally related jobs would be another interesting area to look at (e.g. hardware manufacturing and engineering hires and levels) from before and after the bubble.

 

What is the definition of an IT job in regard to this thread? There are many, many levels of IT positions.

 

Robert Half/CIO Update report on hiring trends

Robert Half's hiring survey is posted in this week's CIO Update. Of note:

- CIOs at the largest firms (1,000 or more employees) forecast the strongest employment growth (contradicting JoAnn's statement in the other thread that the growth areas are in smaller firms).

-Business growth is the primary motivation for adding IT staff.
Help desk/end-user support is the hottest job category within IT departments (supporting the thesis that the new jobs are on the low end).

-The West North Central states (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota) lead the nation in hiring optimism (supports the belief that the jobs are moving away from the traditional coastal centers).

-Executives in the retail industry are most optimistic about hiring activity.

http://www.cioupdate.com/career/article.php/3590496

 

Re: Robert Half/CIO Update report on hiring trends

I'm not the one who made the statement; however, I did agree with it. I think its more of a matter of perception. For instance, consider when IBM lays off 10,000 people or if 1000 much smaller companies hire 10 each. What gets the most press? From that point I think Jeff's point is correct. I always believed that small/medium companies create more jobs per year than the the fortune 500 does. So without concrete statistics, I still feel that Jeff Walker is probably right.

 

Supposedly the Tech industry in Austin is booming. I can't take advantabge of it though.... but I am happy with what I am doing at the moment.

I believe that the Government has opened more VISA spots for Tech people. Supposedly the tech industry is lacking qualified applicants.

From my expierence when I worked at Dell, some of the foreign employee's could really do their jobs and some couldn't. Which is about on par with the non-foreign employee's.

Though there was a "programming" contest about a year ago, and the American's won, and the team from India came in way at the back of the pack. I wish I could remember what the contest was called. They did a story about it on NPR

 

So much for having a dialogue.

 

ask the NAACB?

The article doesn't really say, so I am not sure what dialogue you want.

 

You're right. The article doesn't really say so. That's why I asked in what areas of "IT" people are personally seeing outsourcing, growth or job losses. Who best to ask than people who actually work in varying areas of IT?

 

I see it in development, some helpdesk and even some project management. The PMs are to support the offshore developers.

Frankly, it can be quite a mess and is tough to manage. In my eyes, it is tough to manage teams around the clock (US and say ... India).

Sys Admin work will stay. Learn VMWare and Citrix. Security is good. PM work is still pretty solid, along with higher levels of architecture planning. There will also always be room for people that know many different specialties, and lastly, it is always hard to find good people that have a passion for technology. I would do my job if it paid half as much, because I love computing.

 

Re: Re: Robert Half/CIO Update report on hiring trends

For some reason I see the need to point out that even if this is true there is still an economic impact; because smaller firms generally don't offer the same salary or benefits of the larger ones. Therefore although you may still be employed, you are paying more in insurance, getting less time off and making a smaller salary. This is hardly equivalent in my opinion.

 

Re: Re: Re: Robert Half/CIO Update report on hiring trends

I don't know what you consider a small company; however, small companies based on market capitolization create 13 times more patents than larger companies, produce 50% of all non-farm GDP and create 75% of all the new jobs . When you hear market analysts talk about small companies they are talking about companies like Boston Scientific or Pixar. These companies are not in the fortune 500 nor the fortune 1000 for that matter. The salaries and benifits of these companies are very competitive and better than many fortune 500 companies so I'm not really sure how you can make such a blanket statement.

In 1994 I worked for Baxter Healthcare which at that time was a fortune 500 company. It was the second largest medical instrument/supply company in the world next to Johnson & Johnson. I left that company to take a job at a small (<200 employees) company called Abra Cadabra Software. My 401(k) plan ended up being better, I have received 10's of thousands of stock options through the years, and I received a 5% increase in salary. ACS was eventually purchased by Best Programs, which then went public as Best Software and then purchased by a large English firm called Sage Software. Today I make 3X what I made in 1994 and I don't think this is atypical of people who have careers at successful small companies.

IMO, people who want to get ahead in life don't go to work for behemoths. They want to work somewhere they can wear a lot of hats and get a lot of opportunity. This describes the kind of environment one sees in small companies.

Note: Pixar of course was recently purchased by Disney and so is no longer a small company. However, there are many more Pixars out there feeding the US economy.