Tracking the IT Job Market with a Bot

atlantageek writes "Is the IT job market improving? Is the growth in Unix or Windows? Should I study Data Warehousing or E-Commerce? Identify the recent trends with CJ Miner, a small tool I've written that has been monitoring the Computer Jobs website for the last year."

Comments

Don't you mean

[Anonymous Coward]

"track how the computerjobs.com website has been doing"?

Re:More info needed

[Seumas]

Considering that it shows about 500,000 jobs in the Denver area right now (which would mean something like 25% of the population - man woman and child - are working in IT departments), I would say very few.

Anyway, who the hell actually uses any sort of service or website to find a tech job above anything but entry level? That's what contacts and networking are for. You find yourself unemployed or looking for a new job and you put your feelers out to all your friends and colleagues who have moved to other companies over the years and they get you an interview.

*shrug*

IT Market Does Not Follow Economic Laws

[reporter]

The market for information-technology (IT) jobs does not operate according to the laws of economics. Allow me to explain. A shortage of labor is a normal market force, and government should not intervene to counteract this force. Two of the effects of a shortage is (1) to boost wages and (2) improve working conditions.

However, whenever a shortage of labor occurs in the IT market, the government consistently intervenes by importing H-1B workers to fix this shortage. As a result, the growth in wages is damaged. Working conditions (like working 60+ hours per week) do not improve.

Any perceived shortage in the market for IT labor is illusory. If this shortage were real, it would be short-lived, due to government intervention.

By the way, we see the same phenomenon in the market for unskilled labor: e.g. picking vegetables and fruits. The government fixes this shortage by allowing illegal aliens to flood this market for unskilled labor. As a result, wages (hovering around $5.00 per hour for fruit-picking in Southern California) never rise. Working conditions (like standing for more than 9 hours per day in the strawberry fields) never improve.

The rub is that politicians do not care about Washington's gross tampering in and bludgeoning of a (relatively) free market like the USA. Washington is eager to fix shortages of labor. However, Washington rarely fixes shortages of jobs by, for example, creating more government jobs. The interests of Washington are not aligned with the hopes and aspirations of middle America.

We should close the American market to (relatively) non-free markets like India, China, and Mexico. Further, the American market should be flung wide open to (relatively) free markets like Eastern/Western Europe, Canada, and Japan. Free trade is good -- only when we are trading with other societies that maintain (relatively) free markets.

Re:IT Market Does Not Follow Economic Laws

[globalar]

Basically what you are proposing is a division between the industrialized economies with higher living standards and the developing economies with large labor supply. Closing markets strategically will make things more equitable, hence free? This is a foreign idea to free trade or free market theory.

Closing a market to supply (or demand) makes it "non-free", correct? We are talking about liberal (to neoclassical) economics right?

The U.S. market is purchasing the labor of India, China, and Mexico. Following the supply and demand theory, lowering the supply of labor will raise the price of said labor. This will also have the effect of lowering demand. A higher price lowers demand. Sure demand is infinite, but the resources to fulfill it are not. There is excess capital in the margin to handle higher costs, but that will only go to the higher price if there is no alternative. Freezing the capital flows through the U.S. is impossible/insane, so there will be an alternative somewhere in the world for money to go. It may not be to U.S. labor.

With lower demand and higher prices, the U.S. market will not pay for more labor, it will pay for less. Even if demand were to stay constant, the resources behind it would be forced to buy less labor. So the job market will shrink or stagnate. The dollar will buy less labor in the U.S., hence less productivity per dollar spent on U.S. labor. The result is lost market output, which will mean fewer jobs in the U.S. Not to mention our stock investments and retirement may take a pounding.

"Any perceived shortage in the market for IT labor is illusory."

OK. Why then do companies hire staff if there is no demand for more labor? Wait...

"Washington is eager to fix shortages of labor..."

How about the market in general? Since we agree there is no shortage, I assume we can agree that lowering the price of a commodity is still desirable. Any market should seek a lower price of labor if the output is acceptable. Just like we want higher salaries or lower prices. Corporations would import labor freely if the government didn't have restrictions on immigration (i.e. supply controls). So if we want something more like a free trade, immigration restrictions should go. You propose the opposite solution.

So the shortage is not a shortage of labor, but a shortage of labor at the right price.

The "laws of economics" (which aren't to functional as laws) don't say labor has to be an American who wants a job, could be given a job, or should have a job with benefits x, y, and z. Hell, they don't even say labor has to be bought from "free" economies. Neither do American consumers, apparently. The U.S. consumer market has agreed to put low prices on labor in exchange for more goods.

Finally, contrasting the markets of Europe, Canada, or Japan as free vs. India, China, and Mexico is, respectively, naive. Considering the labor market alone (we could go all day talking about other commodity restrictions, WTO talks take years), the three industrialized countries mentioned have protectionist, expensive labor policies which are a kind of luxury tax on labor. Many of these were designed to tax the excess capital achieved through the efficiences of corporate machines and redistribute it back to the society in some way. Of course, Americans don't like paying for European society and the purchase of labor in China, India, etc. proves this. Americans don't even want to pay for some of their own labor.

Re:IT Market Does Not Follow Economic Laws

[Tablizer]

There's nothing that says that a shortage in IT workers should result in an improvement in working conditions (defined in your post as a reduction in working hours). In fact, if there is a shortage of workers, the expectations for hours worked individually should increase, not decrease.

No, because if there really was a shortage, one could threaten to leave to work for a 40-hour company, and the biz would have to comply or start another difficult hunt.

(BTW, there is no "IT shortage". Biz lobbyists made it up out of thin air because they could and did get away with it.)

Re:IT Market Does Not Follow Economic Laws

[Courageous]

A shortage of labor is a normal market force, and government should not intervene to counteract this force.

Well, except for the fact that you have it all absolutely backwards! When the shortage appears, the government, which is already intervening elects to relax its interventions.

A limited number of foreign workers (fixed number of H1-B's) is itself per se an intervention. Without this intervention, the market would freely correct itself, through unrestricted immigration.

So what we have is a market where the government defacto creates shortages (through dejure immigration controls), but occasionally lets up on the shortage-creating phenonomenon, allowing normal market dynamics to function.

C//

What to study?

[Samir Gupta]

Should I study Data Warehousing or E-Commerce?

You should be studying Computer Science...

Ever wonder what happened to all those mainframe or COBOL folks? Knowing about E-commerce, Unix, Windows, Java, XML, or whatever the technology or trend du jour is might be impressive now, but in a few years, come the next thing, where will you be then? These things change at the blink of an eye.

On the other hand, algorithms, computability theory, formal languages, predicate logic, etc. don't.

A solid foundation of the theory will enable you to understand and learn whatever specific language or technology you need for the job, and allow you to be nimble enough to quickly pick up and go with the latest trends as the market changes.

legacy systems?

[spoonyfork]

The chart has an option for "Legacy Systems" which sounds way too general. I mean, isn't everything currently running in production legacy?

Re:Script Kiddie Shortcut...

[Tablizer]

But how many jobs have he gotten with his kiddie script monitoring one website? There's no alternative to updating your resume, prowling multiple websites for job listings, submitting your resume, and playing phone message tag until you land a job (or, more likely, a contract).

You don't understand. This is slashdot. We form burning urges to automate drudgery instead of live it. A true geek can only pull so many fake smiles and handshakes before going insane. When cornered, skunks spray; geeks code.

Re:What's better?

[vlad_petric]

The H-1 part I simply don't see. It's simply bringing people that are (much) more skilled than the average American. Furthermore, there's a cap on them - about 200k IIRC. This means that there's basically one H-1 worker per 1500 Americans. Finally, let's not forget that other countries are sometimes better in training specialists in some fields. It's very weird that these countries are very upset that they're losing their top specialists (after subsidizing their education), while in the States people feel threatened by them.

BTW, let me just point out that almost any kind of commoditization helps the economy, including the one of the workforce. For instance, post-WW2 Germany did benefit from cheap Turkish workforce, which contributed to their rebuilding effort. Well, they tend to forget that now :)

Project management and Calif*

[heroine]

Now one thing you learn after college a lot more than you learn in college is exactly how to differentiate between jobs. The real world isn't defined as much by the type of programming you do as much as the scope of your responsibility.

Resume readers don't care if you're a Windows programmer, a UNIX programmer, a hardware designer, or a secretary. They want to see if you're a programmer, project lead, project manager, marketing manager, director, etc.

Things like Google, open source, wiki have leveled the playing field to where it doesn't matter if you study hardware, windows, AS/400, or UNIX. These things can all be learned by anyone at any time. In modern companies the skills at any given level of responsibility are being learned on demand as they're needed. Hardware designers one day are being used as UNIX programmers the next day.

Todays differentiation is in how much responsibility you're capable of having. Most resumes are being divided into management, sales and programming and as far as we can tell from the 36 checkboxes, management is the place to be.