Slashdot Mirror
U.S. IT jobs Down 400K Since 2001
Cryofan writes "A research study shows that American information technology industry 'lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001, when the recession began, and April 2004.' Over half of those jobs - 206,300 - were lost after the recession was declared over in November 2001. In all, the job market for high-tech workers shrank by 18.8 percent, to 1,743,500, between March 2001 and April 2004. And the bloodletting continues -- as
reported here on Slashdot earlier this year, the number of employed Software Engineers fell by 15% from April to July of 2004 (from 856,000 to 725,000)."
Just keep in mind that the DOD itself doesn't actually do much of anything in the way of software development. They mainly manage contracts with companies like yours. So you should make sure you ask the right questions, lest you find yourself jumping on-board what later turns out to be a non/semi-technical managerial position.
it's down 48%.
Thanks, George. You useless freakin Dork.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
All politicians are liars. I'd rather have Clinton as president and get a balanced budget instead of national health care versus a talking chimpanzee promising whatever he's promising and getting "National Security".
I've been recommending people to FactCheck.org to see past all the political spin and really learn about the issues before the election. Factcheck is a non-partisan voter advocacy group that does a great job of separating fact from fiction in the midst of all the mudslinging going on.
The Bolachek Journals
Sorry for the broken links:
5
http://archive.salon.com/politics/war_room/2004/02 /23/mcjobs/
http://www.shortnews.com/shownews.cfm?id=37255
http://www.canuckflack.com/archives/000084.html
http://www.bradcarson.com/pressreleases/archives/0 00416.php
http://www.poe-news.com/stories.php?poeurlid=3208
Are we to equate a worker on an assembly line to the punk messsing up my order at McDonalds? Saying fast food workers are part of the manufacturing sector is a clever way to say that America is gaining manufacturing jobs. Too bad it's like Enron filing debits to collectors as assets.
Wow four years later and it's still Clinton's fault huh? Nothing Bush did in the last four years had any effect on the economy whatsoever huh?
First, I didn't say it was Clinton's fault, I only said it happened during his tenure. Second, the effects of a market correction do not occur instantly, so you cannot expect all economic influences from the time of Clinton to cease the day Bush took office.
I know the chic thing to do is to blame Bush for the bad economy, but from where I stand the economy isn't doing too badly. If the voters follow their pocket books, he'll win the election. The programming side of the tech sector got hit hard, and that probably affets you, but otherwise we're looking at a pretty good unemployment rate.
To put a personal spin on things, I don't have any friends, relatives or neighbors that are unemployed. A coworker whose contract ran out last month has already found a new permanant non-contractor job at a higher salary.
Thanks to Bush we no longer have to put up with booming markets, pool tables and laundramats in the workplace or those silly 75K salaries.
If you were like me, you milked those years for all they were worth. But don't imagine for a minute that it represented the normal state of a healthy economy. Complaining about Bush not restoring a speculative market bubble is rather silly.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
No, free trade helps both countries. Just look at how hurt many industries were when Bush raised protectionist tariffs on steel: the steel industry was happy, but the rest of the country got hit with higher supply costs.
And your contention that the desire to lead a happy life is antithetical to free market capitalism is just plain hogwash.
Hmm, is it really? Free market capitalism is based on the sole drive to maximise Profit for the company and to address all other things only as a mean to reach this goal. Last time I checked, the goal to providing a good life to the unwashed masses was more of a socialist thing, not really on the agenda of free market capitlism.
The people owning the profitable companies will then be able to lead a very happy life.
For a company to achieve the optimum performance, it may also be useful from time to time to allow one's workers to lead a happy life.
But other than that, free market capitalism achieves its highest profits, when they can leech common resources or exploit people that can't defend them.
For this reason, rules have been made in some places, to prevent this, like laws against dumping toxic waste in rivers, bans on children labour, rules about truth in advertisment, customer protection laws etc.
Companies deal with these limitations in different ways. Sometime they invested in treating plants, sometime they just pay off a corrupt water inpsector, sometime they ship the waste to somewhere else and dump there and sometime they move the plant to location with less strict rules.
But in all of this one is certain, living next to a toxic waste dump, children aged 5 sewing sneakers, people getting ripped off by untrue advertisment have a more miserable life.
If the exploitation of people and common resources gets too bad, people won't stand for it and do something about it. this could be getting paid off by the company, have new laws passed against the behaviour or - in the extreme case - civil war.
The assumption, that the welfare of the maximum people and the preservation of common resources is always the best course in a free market capitalism is not based on any hard evidence. Facts supports more the opposite view and that companies strive to achieve short term gains at the cost of smaller but sustained long term profits.
People on can stand that much abuse, and when free market capitalism exceeds that limit, the rules change.
Actually, corporations have a legal obligation (under US law) to look after the interest of the shareholders. Any CEO that would put the welfare of the public ahead of profits is breaking the law. (I'm reading this book if you want a reference).
<sarcasm>
What we have to do is to put all our money into stocks, so that when our jobs are outsourced to other countries, we can live of the dividends. These will be very high, as the multi-national corporations will be making record profits.
By then there will be no tax on investment income and we'll be sitting pretty.
</sarcasm>
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Very good, but the one detail you missed is the same one the article missed in the first place.
The Dot bomb started in the spring of 2000, not 2001. It started with laying off the Y2K people. The qualified Y2K people started taking the jobs of the others and the crash began.
I, for one was laid off in June 2000, and found a new job twice that summer. The second one is the one I still have now.
its not just that the chinese work for less, is the exchange rates. The yuan is fixed by the chinese government to a certain dollar exchange rate.
If an equal number of yuan and dollars had the same buying power, things would be a little different.
there are other factors as well, but the exchange rates do make a signifigant difference
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
"I was a couragous soldier in Vietnam!" "What do you mean everyone else that was with me says I was a coward and an idiot! SHIT the truth is out!"
All of the claims by that Swift Boat group that ran those ads have been thouroghly debunked. One of them even got the same award Kerry did from the same incident. And ask the guy Kerry pulled from the water if Kerry was a coward?
It's also been well-documented that that Swift Boat group consisted of mostly Republican activists who had, if not direct/illegal ties to the Bush campaign, at least a wink-wink-nudge-nudge ties.
The fact is that you wing-nuts can't stand it when someone who served in Vietnam criticizes the Bushes, but let's look at the record.
Bushies say: Manchurian Candidate - fathered a child with a black woman.
Bushies say: He's unpatriotic because he thinks Homeland Security workers ought to be able to unionize.
Bushies say: Didn't earn the medals. Wounds not sufficiently serious. Vietnam vets had their "feelings hurt" when Kerry testified as to the war crimes that soldiers were ordered to do.
Yeah I want a guy that cant make up his mind and lies about is service duty. And you cant say Bush lied because its all there. Even though they try and make something out of his record theres nothing there to bash him about. :) I love liberal media.
Nothing to bash Bush about? Let's look at the President's "record"
His business record is no better.
And as to the "liberal media", they have given Bush a free ride for a long time now. They held Al Gore to far tougher standards of "truth" then they've ever held Bush, and they're doing it again to Kerry. If you want to continue your delusional right-wing thinking, go ahead, but don't go crying "liberal media" whenever they bring up inconvenient facts which challenge your pre-conceived notions.
Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.