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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)."
india and china's economy growth is booming :)
no really. it's true.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Doesn't this belong in politics.slashdot.org? ;)
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
and outsourcing to other counties doesn't help. ppl need to realize that the IT gravy train is over, it's time to put up or shutup. certificates and degrees no longer hold the water they once did. find a skill, hone it, and hunker down, cause it's going to get windy before there's another round of jobs with the 'wow' factor.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
While the IT job market has shrunk by close to 20%, how does the industry do? Was profit/revenue etc down by similar margin as well?
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
If you work in one of the industries of the nineteenth century, namely farming or steel, the politicians call you "regular Americans" and bail you out with subsidies and trade protections. If you are one of the far more numerous IT workers whose taxes bankroll the nation, you get a shrug and a suggestion you go back to school.
I'm really concerned that the prevailing opinion on Slashdot seems to be that outsourcing is horrible. I hate that it's hard for people to find work and that many IT workers have lost their jobs, just as much as anyone else, but stopping outsourcing is not the solution. We operate in a global economy, if companies did not outsource then they would not remain competitive in the global market and you would all lose your jobs. Despite the temporary hardships of the people who have lost their jobs, this is, in the end, for the good of the U.S. economy. It's just a restructuring of the work force right now.
I'm sorry if anyone here disagrees (and I'm sure there are those who will) but I really think you need to look at the big picture and I hope you'll agree that it's for the best for all of us, despite the temporary problems it's causing for many of you.
Those lost jobs, are they measured from when the bubble started, the peak of the bubble, a pre-bubble trend line predicting normal growth? India and China's high tech growth, is there a bubble over their? Have we, in typical American fashion, over reacted to one extreme and gone to the other? The only point I am trying to make is that things are far more complicated than a simple statistic suggests.
I'm curious. Exactly *how* do you expect the president to get jobs back?
Stop spending $100s of billions on counterproductive wars, farm subsidies, ineffective weapons systems, etc. Oh, and stop pretending that with as much as we spend on Medicare and Medicaid, we don't already have socialized medicine; we just have a form that provides a disincentive for the LMC to work, while imposing an HR burden on every business.
Presidents can't fix the economy. But they can sure screw it up...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Instead of giving massive amounts of money to wasteful defense contractors & other government cronies (or having it lost in the rats-mazes of bureaucracy), use all that money to hire LOTS of front-line workers. E.g., teachers, firemen, policemen, social workers, forest rangers, etc. (Note: front-line != bureaucrats.)
Not only does this directly give people jobs, but all of those types of jobs contribute directly to the infrastructure (which makes the general society have a better standard of living & creates opportunities for other non-government related jobs), plus all of those people are going to be _spending_ most of their money, which creates demand for goods & services, which causes companies to want to gear up to satisfy the demand, etc). It also increases opportunities for people in the low economic classes to save their way into more stable existences.
I like to think of it as trickle-UP economics, like nutrition being injected at the bottom of the food chain (which benefits _everything_ in the food chain), instead of "trickle-down" economics which encourages class stratification.
bush has put american in such a recession, not to mention his spending on iraq which put america in a huge debt, he could have used that money right here, to fix problems in USA.
Here here. There was a great chart recently (in the New York Times I think) that showed how the money we 've spent in Iraq could be better spent here on home... on things like better border security, more cops on the street, etc. Very sobering.
Bush has completely screwed up in the war on terror. He left things unfinished in Afghanistan, Bin Ladin is still at large, no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, increasing violence in Iraq, rising anti-American sentiment throughout the world, and strained relations with our allies. The Bush administration keeps beating the drum about what a steady and determined leader he is... but is anyone paying attention to where he is leading us?
In Bush's convention speach he went on about all the stuff he would do in the next four years. Reduce the deficit, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, protect the environment, and make us safer from terrorism... but he had the last four years to accomplish that and he did the exact opposite. He rolled back environmental protections, ran up a record deficit, adopted an energy policy drafted by Enron, and engaged in a illconceived, preemptive war that has become a recruiting poster for the terrorists. And we are suposed believe he will do better in the next four years?
The Bolachek Journals
I remember lots of grumblings about Gore being more "tech-friendly" than Bush, around that time. To me the recession seemed to follow the election's outcome quite fittingly. Remember the slap on the wrist Microsoft received in 2001? If economic logic holds that competition makes for a healthy economy, then Republicans (based on behavior alone) are quite anti-healthy economy.
;-)
I've lived in third-world countries enough to know that the very poor are kept in poverty by the very wealthy -- who hold, not just most of the wealth, but most of the power. What my armchair-economist opinion says is:
1) Robin Hood would have made a good Democrat and a great economist. To tax the rich to support the commoners (Welfare, Healthcare, decent Unemployment benefits, Social Security, etc.) forces money to "flow".
2) When one cuts taxes for the rich it cuts off the flow of money -- plain and simple.
3) "Trickle-down Economics" is pure myth. There is no such thing. It's a nice idea and, like a lot of get-rich-quick schemes, is based on a few grains of truth.
Wealthy people *hoard* money. It's in their nature to do so. That's why they're wealthy. You have to incent them to invest their money. Taxes make for a great incentive to "shelter" one's money -- through investments. Use it or lose it! Ever wonder why VC's are being so stingie these days? Their money is much safer, today, from taxation. The most important factor in converting a stagnant economy (as found in so many 3rd world countries) into a bristling one is simply to get one's currency to flow!
It's easy to think a recession couldn't just happen so quickly; Easy to think the resession was "inherited". But economic policies have very real, fast-acting consequences. If you don't believe it, then you haven't watched the reactions on Wall Street on the days when Allen Greenspan speaks.
Well, I guess the earlier poster was right. This *does* belong in politics.slashdot.org
You go tell that to someone in a trailer park near Saint Louis or Detroit, then if you live you can come back and tell us the tale of how it went.
The gap does matter, because when a significant proportion of the population becomes richer and the rest doesn't or not as much, large items such as houses, access to private health care, private education and even cars become a lot more expensive and you have the making of deprived neighborhoods where everyone is a tenant in a shabby house, and then crime flourishes.
In the US there is a lot of crime, a lot of drugs, a lot of people under a federally declared line of poverty who live a short and dangerous life that a Roman Emperor certainly wouldn't have chosen for himself.
This is also true of most countries in the west. In Australia where I live Aboriginal people on average live 20 years less than non-aboriginal, even in the middle of Sydney. A lot of it is due to poor sanitation, lack of education and general poverty.
There are poor people in the US and elsewhere who are not given a fair deal in life because they happen to have been born in a poor neighborhood and I can tell you that it does in fact suck.
I'm pretty damn certain you wouldn't want to take their place next to the beautiful cell phone they have so please stop patronizing, you are insulting a lot of people.
Uhhhh.... I was with you until this:
If you hate what is happening to our country, the USA, then please write the following on the November ballot.
president: Bill O'Reilly
vice-president: Tammy Bruce
Seriously, I've said the same stuff about the situation with India and China, just got finished mentioning it before I saw this post. But, and this is a big but, your conclusion makes abso-fscking-lutely no sense whatsoever. Bill OReilly can't keep left and right straight, much less understand how the hell to deal with pushing Fair Trade instead of Free Trade.
How would an anti-Union, pro-Corporate shill for the right do jack to help the American Worker?
I was really expecting to see you throw support to John Kerry, but WTF? Did I miss a joke somewhere?
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
And people buy the least expensive item possible.
Who cares why Indians and Chinese are willing to work for less? It doesn't matter. If their governments are willing to force their people to sell their labor for cheap (an assumption I disagree with, but let's run with it anyway) that's just good for us.
Americans want their own jobs protected, but then turn around and buy the imported item that's cheaper. And that *IS* a free market - Americans are deciding that saving a few bucks is better than employing other americans, and THAT is why jobs are outsourced.
Because Americans WANT jobs to be outsourced.
Just not theirs. But they lose that vote.
paintball
There's no other way to say it. YOU ARE WRONG. Not just a little wrong, but really really wrong.
.06%. In the previous 8 recoveries, since the Great Depression, the average growth was split at about 13.9% corporate profit and 9.9% labor with private wage growth of 7.2%.
It matters, it matters a lot. Concentration of wealth is the single greatest threat to our democracy and the American Revolution. Go read the Federalist Papers. This "class-warfare claptrap", as you call it, is real. Perhaps Marie Antionette or the Bolsheviks could give you a little refresher. Your example is crap to boot. The current recovery has seen corporate profits grow by 62.2% while private wages have fallen by
There is a point, which can't be defined, where the concentration of wealth becomes so great that the probability that the wealthy will wind up in a losing deal falls to such a point that there is no way to get ahead. New growth is dominated by the wealthy (see the cronyism of 90's IPO's), those without wealth have no choice but to scramble for scraps from the table. This results in defacto tyranny and lack of opportunity. It results in stagnation of innovation, just like when property was controlled entirely by royalty and the church in Europe.
The purpose of the Revolution was to ensure that no citizen is forced to live the life of a slave (obvious exception for slaves, who weren't citizens). When you don't have choices, you are a slave. It doesn't matter if that lack of choice comes from government or private means.
Some men can work 40 hours a week and easily support himself, but there are millions of Americans that can't. The number of people living below the poverty line has increased by 1.4 million in the last year alone. Your argument is like saying the serfs were better off because their lords protected them from roving gangs of bandits. The facts disagree with your estimate of the welfare of the poor in this country.
Go look up Noah Webster, he wrote on the side of the Federalists and either Madison or Hamilton's request (can't remember which). Your arguements are nothing more than straw men. Go read some primary sources, look at the whole picture and apply some logic.
Wealth is real power. If the scales become tipped too far, our entire country will fail. The parent isn't insightful, it's naive. It's a modern version of "If they have no bread, let them eat cake!".
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
Bush's recent surge in the polls is likely in no small part because of the these ads.
I'm willing to bet it had more to do with the speaches at the RNC having to do with actual, important, and relevent issues. The DNC degenerated into a "yay, I served in Vietnam" pep rally.
Don't get me wrong, I am no friend of Bush (and I sure as hell will not be voting for him), but Kerry is running the saddest campaign I have seen yet. The Swift boat thing wouldn't have even BEEN an issue if Kerry hadn't made it the cornerstone of his early campaign. It is completely irrelevent. Not to mention the constant "I have a plan for the economy and Iraq but I can't tell you until after I am elected" comments.
And the strange "let's blame Bush for letting the assault weapon ban expire" tactic. Nevermind that it was a completely symbolic law that accomplished absolutely nothing, and never mind that Bush (as president) doesn't introduce legislation. Say, isn't introducing legislation the job of congressmen? And what is Kerry again? hmmmmm. I'm pretty sure he is a congressman but the guy never shows up for votes. Sheesh.
Given all the legit ammunition against Bush this election should be a cakewalk, yet we see Kerry consistently screw it up.
No slave ever got freedom by happily pleasing his masters.
Again, bad logic. You've provided a false dichotomy. Choose the second option all you want, it doesn't mean it's based in reality. NAFTA did send a lot of jobs outside the US, go ask anyone who lost a manufacturing job to Mexico. Outsourcing is a bad deal. It's sending middle class jobs and a strong tax base overseas for what? What has come back? Where are the new industries building on top of this and creating jobs? Why would you even start that industry in this country instead of India?
Your response to someone telling you that you got screwed in a business deal is "don't be a girlie-man economist"? I call it being stupid, but don't take it from me: I Am an Economic Girlie-Man [Motley Fool Take] September 1, 2004
Free Trade only works among equals. We are not equal to any other country or economy in the world. Free Trade is a one way street for this country where we lose. Fair Trade is the only way we can grow and ensure that the promises of globalization are realized.
The current situation is being buoyed by the floating of our currency by China and other developing countries so that they can artifically lower their currency and keep the growth coming at our expense, literally.
You're solution is to smile while we trade good middle class jobs and quality American products for cheap Chinese crap at Wal-Mart and non-service from India. Excuse me if I hold higher asperations for my country.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
When the USA interacts with, say, China, we have the interaction of a free market and a non-free market. The by-product (i.e. millions of underemployed Chinese) of non-market forces now affects the market dynamics in the USA.
I'm not sure I understand how the influx of cheap labor would be any worse for the U.S. than if China truly did have a free market.
If China had a truly free market, and your assumption about this improving the Chineses domestic job market was true, then who would all these workers be employed by? Chinese companies. And who would these Chinese companies compete with? American companies, which would have a competitive disadvantage since American workers are more expensive than Chinese workers, thanks to high living costs.
The American companies would then lose business, forcing them to trim their workforces.
The problem here is that if we try to compete with other countries in the unskilled or lesser-skilled labor markets, we will lose every time. In the long run, there are only a few things that we can do if we want to keep our jobs:
a. Become exceptionally skilled workers (not difficult, considering the exceptional quality of educational institutions in the U.S.)
b. Keep on moving into new markets as the old markets become dominated by companies that rely on cheap labor.
c. Do something about the high living costs in the U.S., which are making this country extremely hostile to the working classes.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Much as any politician would hate to accept, the economy is now well and truly in the hand of the Corporates, not the political forum. Anyone getting elected to the presidency will hardly make a difference to the economy. Consider the strength of the Chinese and the Indian economies, and consider for a moment who's been in power in those countries for some years now....
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Unfortunately the goverments in these countries are unable to pay for all the infrastructure etc that is needed.
The people in the IT sectors are making money for countries like India. The Indian government has put a lot of money into educating people and now the Indian IT sector is taking off. This will bring money into India and from those taxes generate revenue for the govt to pay for infrastructure etc. With a global economy Indian business men are just taking advantage of supply and demand, at present the supply side of things (heaps of people in India with IT skills) is larger than the demand (companies wanting to outsource) and therefore the price is dirt cheap.
You saw the same thing with steel and cars. I remember when if you were looking at cheap/crap electronics you could be guarenteed that it came from Taiwan. Over time the reputation of Taiwan has improved and higher value goods are being produced there. Cheap electronics now typically come from China. Same thing happened with cars and Japan. I would like to see the look on a car sales person face in 1980 if you told them that Japan would be producing some of the top of the line cars, and that Toyota and Honda would both have Formula 1 and Indy cars.
Go out and get sailing!
This is probably going to get my flamed to hell, but screw it.
.gov is spending all the money. As a college grad, you start out with a rank increase, there are programs where they will pay off your loans. Add to that the fact that they will train you in the practical application of your skills, they'll pay you to continue going to school while you're in the military, and unless you're a total screw up you've got a fair paying job for at least 4 to 6 years. And it really is fair paying, as you get a paycheck, a housing allowance, and a food allowance, not to mention a whole crap load of other potential bonuses like extra pay for knowing a second language.
.mil of today isn't like the .mil of 10 years ago. When I started out in the IT industry the thought of the military was not even on my radar. After 2 years of being unemployed from the IT industry I started to really stretch my idea of what was acceptable and did a lot of research, and frankly, as a second career, the military really isn't all that bad as long as you aren't infantry. It's the only place where I can make a living, go back to school, and not be penalized by management for it.
;)
Join the military. Frankly, that's where the
The
And to be honest, with the discussions flying around about reinstating the draft, it's a great way to avoid being drafted
Karma: 0 (But I wield a mean +10 Vorpal Apathy)
What has happened is now that all of the failed companies and wacky business models are out of the market, these marginal tech workers are returning to the industries they were trained for. Yes, lots of good, highly trained programmers and analysts got caught up in the crash, because even the lamest of DotComs had to have someone to do the real work. But I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of technology jobs "lost" to outsourcing simply represents a shift of these cross-industry workers back to the areas they are trained in and a decision by US industries to pick a lower cost (and therefore, lower risk) alternative for staffing these lower end tech positions. Why pay $75k and full benefits for an informally trained web developer in the US when you can get the same skills (likely formally trained) offshore?
I'm not defending the trend, but I think that it IS fair to point out that a lot of people were working in the tech industry, far outside their areas of expertise and far ahead of their skill levels and that imbalance has simply been corrected. To call it a loss and to blame that loss on outsourcing is to ignore the incredibly rapid gains that preceeded it.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
I'm curious how many people who are quick to blame the White House for economic woes know who their congresscritters are, let alone who they're running against this November.
The system is broken.
We keep playing the game like it's an open system, and it never was, and now we are quickly discovering the end stops.
Designing an economic model which awards wealth to those who grow, is doomed when a company, any company reaches market saturation.
The American economy no longer exists, American business is multinational, global, and not limited to our borders. It finds cheap labor and brings the saving in production back to the U.S. where American consumers rejoice at the low cost of service and goods. Sadly it's all a sham. It's as unsustainable as a constant diet of junk food. It tastes good while you're eating it, but it's slowly killing you. It's all take and no give, the dollars fly out of the country faster and faster, until the nations fundamental wealth is gone, and the citizens of the nation notice they are now the collective bag holders.
* Money that leaves never supports U.S. economy and infrastructure. * Money that leaves undermines U.S. labor, costing jobs and quality of living. * The growing gap between haves and have nots in the U.S. suggest a growing economic instability. Loss of jobs starting with manufacturing, but now quickly moving up through intellectual "white collar" professions, points to a growing joblessness with no end in sight. As the government services fail (and if you haven't been reading the paper or watching the news at 11:00, local government everywhere in this country is on the verge of collapse), the means to manage and provide basic life needs to the growing disenfranchised evaporates. The middle class vanishes. We are all reduced to the same level of living enjoyed by billions of starving people all over the world. Already 3% of our population owns 75% of the wealth, this is the greatest desparity in wealth in our history. And still the insanity accelerates. This is just the beginning ladies and gentlemen. What will you do, when your kids fresh out of college, with hundred thousand dollar college loans to pay, can't find work. What will you do, when you haven't received a raise in 4 years, and the boss says "Sorry, the work is heading to China."
I've personally spent the last 6 months looking for work, I've had my resume tuned, I have 25 years of technical experience, and I've made it clear I'll do almost anything, and I have not had a single interview. I'm not alone, I have a couple hundred friends and acquaintances who've been unemployed for between 2 and 3.5 years.
I keep hearing neocons mouthing the lines of Scrooge from a Christmas Carol... "the surplus population shold just get on with the business of dying...", or some variation of that. It's not bad yet. It may well get there. If it does, our government, is going to have a very bad time. Our society is going to have a very bad time. We need to begin addressing sustainable business practice from an economic, environmental, and ethics based context. To simply let the train go where it will is to insure a crash none of us will walk away from.
Genda
And all this time I though it might have had something to do with my resume sucks because it doesn't look like an HR wet dream. Or maybe something to do with age bias, I'm older than 20. Or maybe that companies are reluctant to hire even when they're severely understaffed. You figure something is up there when you seen the same job posted for over a year.
Look, all the dotcommers who where cabdrivers and pizza delivery guys have long gone back to their old jobs. They have previous experience that allows them to do that. Have you ever tried to break into another trade when all you have is programming experience? I have news for you. You are considered totally unskilled and your competition for the jobs that take no skills are the dregs of the workforce and they are willing to work for a lot less than you are or even can. Ever try to live on sub minimun under the table wages?
There's some kind of psychological factor here that kicks in when bad things happen to other people, that people use to convince themselves it won't happen to them because the people it did happen to somehow deserved it or brought it upon themselves. Nope. It's pure luck. You either got laid off or did not get laid off. Getting a job again seems to be pure luck (though personal connections or having a HR wet dreame resume seems to help). Think otherwise? Go ahead and quit your job and find out.