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Tracking the IT Job Market with a Bot

Posted by timothy on from the up-up-down-A-B-B-A-down dept.

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."

2 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. IT Market Does Not Follow Economic Laws by reporter · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

    1. Re:IT Market Does Not Follow Economic Laws by Courageous · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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//