Techies Migrate in Search of Work

prostoalex writes "Tracing the story of one family where the father is employed in the IT field, the Washington Post discusses the current unemployment in the information technology field. For a good reason - for the first time in 30 years the IT unemployment rate exceeded the national average unemployment rate, implying that you have a better chance of getting a job if your field is something other than IT. The journalist does offer a disclaimer, saying that the term 'IT worker' is applied equally to a top-notch scientist in a research lab, to a dot-com startup billionaire, and to a local HTML guru. Relevant employment statistics also shows that layoffs in the IT field were up 60% in the third quarter of 2004."

Comments

being a technie myself...

[eobanb]

...I'm planning to migrate to Canada. I hear access to the internets is faster there.

Mr Pacman and his lodging.

[AtariAmarok]

"The article mentions this Mr Pacman and his family are staying in a $58-a-night motel, so basically you work just enough to breath until the next morning?"

He and his family are well known to the staff, and as a result they tend to leave extra power-pills under the bed to get them through the night.

Clinton and Kerry

[AtariAmarok]

""I always have other feelers out," he said. "There's no such thing as a permanent position anymore." ....Clinton and his lookalike Kerry

Well, the first statement applies to Clinton perfectly, as does the second one to Kerry. But I'll be a monkey's uncle if I'd think that they looked alike.

90% of statistics...

[chipmeister]

Actually, about 32.47% of statistics are made up right on the spot.

Re:That's why I hate "IT"

[macshit]

Drives me nuts... but some people seem to love the ability to lump everything together like that.

I got interviewed by a newspaper reporter for one of these "man on the street" stories. When she asked "What do you do?" I said "I'm a computer programmer." Upon hearing that, her face lit up, and she said "Ah, IT!"

Sure enough, the caption under my picture in the paper said "<name>, IT worker".

I suppose if I hunted her down and killed her, the resulting story would be "Reporter Murdered by Enraged IT Worker"...