IT Employment Returns to Pre-Recession Levels

Pixar has over 500 employees (before the merger) and its revenue makes ineligible to be called a small business. Boston Scientific with 20,000 employees is considered anything but small! Sage Software has over 8,000 employees, again not small (so saying you work for, or at a small business is completely inaccurate)! You must remember the contexts in which we are talking also things are not as they once were in 1994. At one time” start-ups" held a lot of promise...like before the bubble popped. In today’s consolidated market you are as likely to go out of business as you are to be bought. I'm not saying all small business is bad for the economy or for employment. They just make poor comparisons to large companies in most instances when comparing benefits (e.g. health insurance, leave, cafeteria plans) they are not as good.

The Standards for a small business are such (according to the SBA):
* 500 employees for most manufacturing and mining industries
* 100 employees for all wholesale trade industries
* $6.5 million for most retail and service industries
* $31 million for most general & heavy construction industries
* $13 million for all special trade contractors
* $0.75 million for most agricultural industries

 

While this thread is about employment levels (not benefits) and while I don't believe there is any correlation between the total salaries of employees of large cap companies (i.e. the fortune 500) versus mid-cap companies versus small cap companies, the truth is that anyone looking after their career knows there is more opportunity with small-cap or micro-cap companies than the fortune 500. This is where the jobs are being created, this is where most of the innovation is occuring, and this is where future careers are being forged.

It is really unrealistic to use the unsustainable benefit plans of GM and such as some sort of bench-mark. They have overpayed for their employees and now they are paying the price. And while you are extolling the generous benefits/salaries of large companies lets take about large companies like Wal-Mart or McDonalds. I can't speak to the wages of their respective IT departments, but I would say that just like any company they have to competitive; however, for the company as a whole their benefit plans are less than desirable. In addition, small companies are out-sourcing much less than large companies. Why? Most don't have the infrastructure to successfully manage heavily outsourced projects. Its large companies who are laying off staff and replacing them with employees from India, Eastern Europe and China for pennies on the dollar. However, even this anti-worker policy is comming home to roost as companies are realizing that out-sourcing is not creating the huge savings that they originally thought. As these countries modernize their infrastructure, their wages will inevitably rise making outsourcing a less attractive option for large companies.

Employment, opportunity, innovation and chance for a piece of the pie is what small companies represent. My career was made successful by choosing a small company over a large company. Today, we are on the cusp of another dot com boom or at the very least, a very lucrative economic period. Anyone preaching differently has an agenda or believes the sky is falling.

Both large and small companies both pay market competitive wages - period. They must, or the quality of their staff will surely suffer. Since small companies are responsible 13 times more patents which translates directly into innovation, I doubt seriously that small companies have less capable staffs.

 

Best job market in 5 years for grads: report

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-03-20T163503Z_01_N20258421_RTRUKOC_0_US-ECONOMY-JOBS.xml&rpc=22

 

In your opinion of course.

I am really beginning to believe that your post belongs in the political forum!

As far as the economic situation we have seen unemployment not get any better or worse since 2001. Wages have gone up marginally.
As far as your economic assumptions I'd challenge them. We recently just had an inverse bond yield curve which historically indicates recession (to the economically challenged this means that 30 year T-Bills were paying less in interest than 5 year Bills which means you had a better return on a shorter term), at the time of this writing the bond yield is flat (to the economically challenged this means that a 30 year T-bill pays the same as a 5-year T-bill, so there is no incentive to tie up money long term). There have been times where recession has not hit when there has been an inverse curve but they are generally the exception.

The point about benefits is it does count as compensation and as I said in an earlier post compensation coupled with the amount of jobs created can give you a better look at the whole picture.

I don't think the sky is falling but I don't think we are in for any pie in the sky years like 1999 or 2000 anytime soon. The numbers don't add up to it. Also I have no agenda and I don't belong to any political party!

 

Do these figures refer to gross sales, net profit, total assets, net worth, market capitalization, or something else?

 

http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr;sid=accc6154857ab2a64d137c77c537ad76;rgn=div8;view=text;node=13%3A1.0.1.1.15.1.231.2;idno=13;cc=ecfr

http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr;sid=accc6154857ab2a64d137c77c537ad76;rgn=div8;view=text;node=13%3A1.0.1.1.15.1.231.4;idno=13;cc=ecfr

I hope that helps answers all your questions Ted.