Slashdot Mirror
Current Unemployment Rate in the IT Industry?
concerned-about-employment asks: "What's the unemployment rate in the IT industry currently? Years ago I heard it was 8-9% but with so many jobs going offshore and the general unemployment rate rising, could it be even higher than before? Has it really broken 10% as some people say? That would mean 1 out of every 10 IT workers is out of a job. Personally though, from the perspective of a recent college graduate, it looks like 20% from here." How does the actual national unemployment rate in IT compare to the number of IT professionals that you know who are currently out of work?
Jobs in IT from tech jobs. There were a large number of non-technical folks who became tech-morass victims. They can find other work far more easily.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
If you just finished school you better have some internship experience. Also, don't demand too much money. I've seen people ask for 60K who just came out of school. For that kind of money one can hire a skilled person with experience nowadays.
Oh and if you procrastinated through out college you are fucked. I have friends who if today came to me for a job I wouldn't hire. It is sad but true.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
After a 7 month period of no job, i can say it is rough out there. The tech companies in my area are VERY picky now about who they hire, and they pay a LOT less. I knew of one big financial firm that wanted a webmaster/developer/Unix SA and were willing to pay 35k for it, and that was the upper max.
Also, be prepared to move to different parts of the country. From what I hear, Silicon Valley isnt so hot any more, but other areas, like Conn. and Raleigh/Durham, NC are much better.
dont show all the people out of work, they only show the people still able to collect unemployment. The news is currently reporting figures of 5-6%, the real figures are probably more like 10%. I used to have a link that talked about this, sorry.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Hopefully you majored in something useful like management or accounting so that you don't have to worry about finding a job when you get out. Keep computers and programming as your hobby and let your other work pay the bills.
If you still have some money, think about pursuing a professional degree (JD, MBA, etc.). Demand for these never dips.
There are no jobs in IT out here for you.
I have been pwned because my
Unless you and everybody else in your department and/or company lost your job simultaneously, chances are VERY GOOD that it's because you sucked and were gunned early on because it was relatively less painful to do so then, for instance, to go without free coffee.
If you still aren't working, chances are you should have never been in the field in the first place. There's jobs. They exist. Some of them are specialized. Some of them are stupid.
All of them will go to the person who sucks least before the manager gets fed up of looking at resume's.
If you are too proud to take a pay cut, you should have become a lawyer.
I'm US born and raised, but I spent a year in India, and I'll tell you one thing, if you want to realize how much of a PRIVILEGE it is to get paid lots of money to type, talk, and think, go spend some time in India. If we were faced with the kind of misery and suffering on a daily basis that the Indians are, well...you probably wouldn't be out of a job.
-Mano
That depends on what you mean by IT. If you're going for a Computer Science or Computer Engineering degree, there are jobs. If you're going for an Information Technology degree, forget it. The former will get you a job programming. The latter will get you in a line with all the other former support staff.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate in the "information" section was 7.2% in December 2002 and 6.5% in December of 2003. The actual number of unemployed was 255K in 12/2002 and 224 in 12/2003.
Huh?
wrenkin wrote:
VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org
The SAGE/SANS/BigAdmin survey done for 2002 says that 15.3% of thier respondants were unemployed for at least a week during the year (I don't have a link offhand, but Google might). They won't post the 2003 survey until March, but I would be suprised if 2003 was worse than 2002.
I've gotten calls from two recuiters looking for people in the last week. I think I got a grand total of 0 calls in 2002, and maybe a couple in 2003. I think people are realizing that not everything can be moved offshore and that programmers with domain/business experience are actually worth what you pay them here in the states. Dell, for example, is moving some of thier IT facilities back to the US after outsourcing it to India.
I hate to jinx it, but I think the worst is over. It may not be 1999 again anytime soon, but the storm clouds are clearing.
Um, dude, 1 in 10 is ten percent.
This sig no verb.
The difference I see between the people complaining about the lack of work and the people working in the IT industry is USUALLY the people working know what they're talking about, know how to do their job, and work for a moderate amount of cash.
The CCNA/MSCE C+ this A+ that guys I know are working at Office Max waiting on the 6 figure job thats going to set them free.
Get paid to code OSS
The real problem is that many in the industry simply don't know how to get a job. First, there is the group of people who were working for a company for 10+ years that got laid off. The job market is very different now than it was, so most aren't prepared. Second, people who got into the business during the boom never had to learn any real skills when it came to landing jobs, so now that companies are picky they are losing out.
The way to find a job is through networking. There is simply no better way, so if you are unemployed and not networking you might need to rethink your situation.
I know people who are no longer considered to be in the IT industry as they've had to get jobs stacking boxes at Home Depot, etc.
They aren't counted since they aren't unemployed, even though they ARE unemployed from their profession.
Any IT-specific numbers you find will be wrong for this reason.
I'm not talking a 1st level phone-jockey, I'm talking about talented sysadmins with many years of experience!
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
No kidding. I know nobody with any useful skills who is making less that six figures, let alone unemployed.
The high rate of employment in IT has been of concern to me. My neice recently graduated from Gonzaga. I worried she might not be able to find employment in her field (Computer engineering), but she was picked up almost immediately by a defense contracter in southern California. According to her, they interviewed 200 graduates and hired well over 50 of them.
It makes me think companies are opting to fill open positions with younger people whom they can hire at a much lower salary.
MOD UP! Insightful!
You're not in the industry without a job, so that would be zero percent, Bob.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
MCSE's don't need to know percentages. There's a little bar that tells you when the job is done when it gets to the end.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
I just graduated in December, and don't have a job. Been spending my days firing off resumes. Only one interview so far, for a job I applied to at the end of October. Had one recruiter call and ask if I was interested in working in a call center, I explained that I didn't spend all this time in college to answer phones. Otherwise, no bites really.
Want to do some sort of network or system admin type work, but it seems everyone wants 3 - 5 years experience -- not much "entry level" stuff out there. Of course, it doesn't help that I live in the middle-of-nowhere Indiana, and most jobs are stating local applicants only. Don't need relocation help, but I think my resume gets tossed right when the HR drone reads my address at the top of my resume.
Well, if you look at my real-world situation it is this:
Friend 1: Employed
Friend 2: Lost Tech Job
Myself 1: Lost Tech Job
Whoa! That's a 66% unemployment rate! Yep. It's pretty bad out there...
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
4 guys worked for me in 2002
1 was layed off in May 2002. spent about 5 months searching before hire.
1 was layed off in Jan 2003. He is still unemployed after 12 months of heavy searching.
1 was layed off in Apr 2003. spent 7 months finding a position before hire.
1 was layed off in Sep 2003. No leads, still searching.
I was layed off in Oct 2003. 8 interviews. still searching.
I would prefer multiple part-time, off-site sysadmin gigs. I have performed remote administration for the past 10 years. It would save a company money to pay me to work remote most days and come in bi-weekly if required.
comment directly in my journal
I'm not too sure about nationally or even locally but I know that personally my unemployment rate is running at %100. Thanks for the painful reminder! :P
We don't need no stinking sig!
No, I'm not unemployed! I'm not just one of those hordes of people thrown out of the common boat by the waves of fate, while others have to pay for my life-support costs.
I am self-employed, an Entrepreneur, a captain of my own fate, hungrily looking for opportunities, just temporarily loaning some more investment from my family, monthly.
Haha only serious.
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
Not entirely true. Development of enterprise applications is hardly the lowest level of jobs, and that tends to be moving overseas too, though the move is more complex than stuff like helpdesks..
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I was unemployed for the first six months of 2003.
Around the time that the war in Iraq started, the job market dried up _completely_. Agencies were blatantly inventing vague pseudo-vacancies just to have something to advertise. I knew it was really really _really_ bad when at one point I saw a job advertisement asking for an "experienced software engineer" to "valet monitors and keyboards for a couple of hours a week."
Things did eventually start to pick up again, but I have friends in the industry who are still out of work, and others who have the threat of redundancy hanging over them.
RDU might be better than it was a year or two ago but it is still pretty bad. I had to leave Raleigh/Durham for Philadelphia because of the lousy job market. Keep in mind I'm a more senior level geek with 10 years in the market (10 years working with MS technologies, 7 years with Linux & Solaris).
I remember going to a TriBUG meeting where every single person there was laid off. These were senior level UNIX geeks, and not one of them could find work. The other UG I was involved in, TriLUG, was doing better probably because of the Linux boom combined with a larger contingent of sysadmins & programmers entrenched in academia where they were a bit safer. Still, enough members of that organization were out of work that some time was set aside at the beginning of every meeting for people to stand up and give a short pitch on who they are and what kind of work they were looking for.
Unless you were a guru sysadmin and programmer and DBA, you had almost no chance of finding work in RDU. And even then you had to be prepared to fight hard, accept entry level pay and still likely face rejection.
The older/larger cities seem to be fairing better than small specialty towns like RDU or Silicon Valley. New York City, Philadelphia, etc. are large and diversified and seem to be weathering the storm better. I'm not as plugged into RDU today as I was a year ago today, but a year ago today it was a wasteland in RDU and only a fool would relocate there without already having a job established.
My software company closed their doors the other month, putting 35 poeople out of work, including 12 programmers 1 sys admin and 3 graphics guys. It's been about 7 weeks now, and no one has found work yet. I am searching 4 different states (the one's where i have family/local addresses) with over 45 applications put out. 3 years programming (.NET and Java) and 3 years systems admin (UNIX/NT) and still NOTHING...not even a call or an interview (except for recruiters, which don't count...offering a mere 3 month contract job at 1/2 my old salary...but even then I hear nothing back). I have a Bachelors in Political Science (I know, doesn't count for much) but also and extra 30+ semester hours in Computer Science/Mathematics (Combined, putting me at about 3 years into a CS degree,too).
What is the trick? I am so fustrated. I have tried both project detailed 2 page resumes and 1pg job specific resumes. Neither work. I am really bummed out at this point. Any pointers?
I would like to pose this question, too: If one takes a contract job, when the contract is up, are you eligable for unemployment again?
The only time I've heard something in the 10% range was an NPR story about underemployment. Specifically it was talking about people with specialized skills like an engineer or airline pilot only finding work at Home Depot. That story put the combined unemployment and underemployment rate at 9.6%.
Is this what you're thinking about when you say 10%?
- doug
Remember that in the US if you are unemployed for more than 2 years you are not unemployeed anymore, you are counted as "not in the work force." IT unemployment in MN as far as I can gather is around 30%. I was at a recent meeting for Minneapolis Study the statistics and you'll find that, if you are unemployeed for more that 2 years you magically disappear from the unemployment statistics. Keep this in mind when looking at any statistics about unemployment. MY Grandmother pointed out that in her town during the depression there was 0% unemployment according to US statistics, that because the entire population was either working or had been unemployeed for more that 2 years...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Why does any company have a mailroom? Or a copy shop. I know how to run a copy machine, and I can put a stamp on an envelope. In truth though, there is a lot of work involved in copies and stamps that isn't visiable from the outside.
I've seen presidents drop 50 pages in a document feeder on the copier, if he can handle it why does the company have a copy room? Answer: because the company sometimes publishes manuals more than a copy or two. The president would make 2 copies of that 50 page document, but more than that and he is better off letting someone else do it. The president could in theory learn to bind those copies, but if he wants a nice presentation better letting someone with expirence do it. (I can bind a book, but expirecnced people can do it nicely)
I can put one letter in the mail. When I need to mail one letter it is faster to do it myself. When I need 100 letters it is better to have the mailroom do it.
Just lost my job this week, and I've already had two serious responses. Unfortunatly both were in California. (I'm not a fan of the politics that rule in CA, I happen to like winter, and my family isn't there. I'd live there though if it paid the bills) Still last time I lost my job it was a few recruiters here and there looking at me, now it feels more serious. So things are still hard, but at least there is some movement towards hiring. I just hope I don't fall for a pay raise that after higher cost of living turns out to be a cut just because I don't know what I'm worth in CA.
Unbfortunatly I know a lot of people who are still out of work after a couple years.
If you only have 2 IT friends in your network (social, not computer), then maybe that's the reason you haven't found a job. It helps to have a lot of friends that can drop your name when their employers need someone.
Where I currently work (IT shop for a network of hospitals), we have dozens (most of the new hires in the last 2 years I've been here) of people who basically took their job just to have a job. VPs who are now Business Analysts, Technical Service Managers now Level 2 Project Managers (basically project plans and meeting minutes), DBAs now data-entry technicians, trained technical L2 Help Desk people working normal call center jobs, Level 3 support geeks working the repair counter at Best Buy, etc. etc.
Some will say that it's because the dot-com boom put those people into high positions they didn't deserve, but these are very smart very qualified people with years of experience that is being completely unused in their current jobs.
As soon as the economy picks up, most of us will be leaving. That means that even if you think there's jobs available, the pool applying for them is those unemployed plus a large portion of people who want an appropriate-level job back. That may leave openings at their current positions, but a lot might not be backfilled.
So even if unemployment is only 10%, I think a better measure is how likely is it for those 10% to be able to find a decent job that fits their skill or experience level? I would say not very good at all unfortunately... and that's my measure of this so-called economic recovery.
--D
Back when I was in school, we got our porn on floppies.
I thought porn was for eliminating floppies?
Shure guys, go to space, this will help our industry... uhm, did i mention i'm from Europe? *running*
"The way to find a job is through networking. There is simply no better way, so if you are unemployed and not networking you might need to rethink your situation."
So all I have to do is claim that you're on my roledex. Thanks chief, but your advice only works when you have "working members"* as part of the 'friends and family" package. Else it's just a crowd of unemployed people.
*It works even better when those members aren't part of the frequently "underemployed" crowd.
"Oh, I didn't just insult the poster, did I?"
No, you just engaged in the time-honored tactic of exageration. I bet the actual number of people who were burger flippers turned working tech. guru were quite low, and mostly of an anidotal nature (the basis for urben legends). Everyone likes to pull out the tech bubble, complete with exagerations, and misconceptions, complete with "friend of a friend" evidence. The problem with the job market however go beyound the dot boom by a big margin. So yes please continue to blame everything on the dot boom, because we all know that the world really is that simple, and easily explained. It makes for better "slashbites".
The unemployment rate is probably not the best indicator of what the job market really looks like.
If you pick up the newspaper and read that there's only 6% unemployment, knowing that anything under 5% is considered inconsequential, you might wonder why jobs seem so scarce.
But if you look at the layoff numbers, those are currently double what they were in 1999. Then you look at new job creation. In 1999, when the economy was full steam, new jobs were being created at around 200,000 plus per month, often exceeding 250,000. It's closer to 42,000 new jobs per month today.
Now add in the fact that it takes 150,000 new jobs per month just to keep up with new workers entering the workforce.
Even if IT unemployment was listed at 10%, you would need to review the IT layoff numbers and new job creation to create an accurate IT picture.
If the US as a whole is losing 100,000+ jobs per month, and it's worse in IT ( or manufacturing ), then you can see that even the unemployment number may not show the seriousness of the specific job market.
Windows network admin (incl hardware and WAN links), Exchange admin, Solaris, webmaster (mixed site, Solaris/Windows servers), comfortable interfacing with C-level executives for user/tech support of the company's product (a CRM package), MySQL, Perl, JSP, XML, javascript, C++ a plus, RDBMS programming experience, security audit and corporate policy formulation experience helpful. On-call 24/7.
Salary: 45K (in a region where the median single person's income is more than 52K, over ALL industries, not just IT)
Scary words I have not uttered in over a decade regardng a job at that pay rate: I took it. Like a previous poster, it's more than a 50% salary cut - but a lot better than what I was making waiting tables after my unemployment ran out.
An MSCS and a patent on one's resume aren't worth what they used to be, in this area at least. Hint: if you're thinking of moving to the Seattle environs, PLEASE STAY AWAY! Hundreds of temporary coffee barristas and servers will be very grateful!
I am going to graduate with my CE degree this spring. The best advice i can give to students in college with a cs,ce,ee major is internships. I interned at Qualcomm this summer and now have an almost guranteed job in the test group i was in and I am not above taking that and have prospects in devlopment posistions in other divisions of the company. Also having a big name like qualcomm toping my experience section of my resume and some good refrences from there i am sure it will help a little with my job search. Of course now to get internships they want experince. I had a year or so in web design/programming and couple years in IT that i did while going to community college. And now with an internship under my belt for my 5 years in college i have a bout 4 solid years of tech expereince, but a lot of my cs and ee, and even grad student friends who have never had a tech related job and can't seem to land any internships. Moral of the story is start young even as a freshman in college try to do some job related to you career goal, samll business a great place to get some expereince. the web design gig was only the two owners and my self turning out half assed web sites and the IT exp was a small financial planning broker with about 10 employees nothing fancy but on my resume they don't know that and I get to put Information and Technology Manager, which i was so i get an interview where i can prove myself
Here in Dallas that got massacred by 9/11, Enron and Worldcom, things are picking up. I've seen the Monster postings quadruple in the last 3 months. Of course the ad for an Oracle/SQL/DB2/PHP programmer with 5+ years experience sounds great until you see that they are only paying $28 an hour. I couldn't stop laughing when I saw that ad. I was sooo tempted to put in my resume.
One thing I don't understand is why companies (not just yours, but many others) are actually cutting back on telecommuting during these "tough times". You would think that companies would be more likely to embrace telecommuting since it'll save them money in the long run.
One of the so-called advantages of offshore outsourcing is that you don't need to pay to lease office space and its associated costs (toilet paper, janitors, heating and air conditioning, etc). It would seem like you could get the same cost benefit from moving to a telecommuting environment, with the added benefit of being able to bring the same people onsite for face-to-face meetings if necessary without having to fly them half way across the world. Plus, workers would probably accept a lower salary since telecommuting offers workers a better quality of life.
I guess this type of thinking is too "outside the box" for your standard MBA. It is easier to follow the trends than start your own trend.
------
www.moneybythenumbers.com