Slashdot Mirror
Forrester Says Tech Downturn Is "Unofficially Over"
alphadogg writes "The US IT market will grow by 6.6% as high-tech spending rebounds in 2010, according to Forrester Research's latest estimates. The research firm based its projections on data reported for 2009, though its fourth quarter numbers are incomplete. Forrester says hints of a recovery surfaced in the third quarter, and now the company expects the global IT market to grow by 8.1% in 2010. Forrester's US and Global IT Market Outlook: Q4 2009 reads: 'The tech downturn of 2008 and 2009 is unofficially over, while the Q3 2009 data for the US and the global market showed continued declines in tech purchases (as we expected). We predict that the Q4 2009 data will show a small increase in buying activity, or at worst, just a small decline.'"
Quoting Soup is good food by the dead kennedys;
We're sorry
You'll just have to leave
Unemployment runs out after just six weeks
How does it feel to be a budget cut?
You're snipped
You no longer exist
Your number's been purged from our central computer
So we can rig the facts
And sweep you under the rug
See our chart? Unemployment's going down
If that ruins your life that's your problem
=====
I guess it's going up, depending on who's perspective you see it from.
Does this mean I'll get a job this year?
The tech jobs market in Boston does feel less dead now than it did for most of 2009. I entered the job market in April and it was six months before I had an interview. Now I've had three in three months. It's tricky to extrapolate from those data points to locate a job offer but it does give me hope.
... now back to the bit mines.
I graduated last November. I was looking for jobs since August. I did not get any calls at least until end of November. Since then I have had an interview every day and finally had the luxury to choose from multiple offers. I know a lot of companies are starting up new projects. A lot of the jobs in my area - Computer Architecture/Systems/Networks is being driven by Cloud Computing. Datacenter style jobs are big. Most positions require experience in Fiber Chanel SAN etc or hardware for large Datacenter switches.
What makes it official? Netcraft?
Now if only people could eat inflection points.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Is this a real tech boost or just places finally needing upgrades? When Vista was found to be needless for both the consumer and business market, most consumers cut spending much in technology and businesses cut any jobs upgrading. When the recession hit, they still had little reason to upgrade. In previous years, major changes happened, compare the speed boost from a 1995 Pentium to a 1999 Pentium III. Now compare a Pentium Dual-Core to a Core 2 Duo, is there really that much of a difference in the 4 years between a 2006 Pentium Dual-Core and a Core 2 Duo? Yes, if you are a gamer it might make a lot of difference, but for most tasks, you wouldn't notice the extra speed, especially when comparing a Pentium to a Pentium III. So when the hardware is good enough, the upgraded software terrible, who wants to spend the money to upgrade? Now, new hardware advances combined with software people don't completely hate (Windows 7) is giving people reason to upgrade.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
We had a 2% cut in staff at the end of 2008. The 2% came from early retirement and not replacing people. There were a few small departments that were eliminated. Some of the people were absorbed into other departments, but not all. We haven't really added any FTE to our head count, but we have gone through a few contractors.
There were some other cuts. No company picnic at 6 flags in 2009. The holiday dinner at a nice steak house was moved to a less pricey Italian restaurant. Our company is spread out and travel was drastically cut. When we did travel the trips were very short.
I didn't loose my job, and I bought a new car in 2009. However, I know a few of those contractors would have like to stayed around longer after their contracts expired. Instead of hiring 10 people at the start of 2010, my boss is being told that she has to wait until Q3.
An economic downturn only affects those who get laid off...
Or don't get bonuses, or don't get the resources/personnel/equipment they need, or entrepreneurs...
I wasn't affected by the recession until I was laid off, awesome how that works, eh? It's a boolean state, either you're employed and not feeling the effects, or you're not employed and can't get a new job at the same level as before, or do get one, but get picked out of far more applicants than before. At which point, your boolean downturn.effect() is reset to zero.
"The most likely alternative to our forecast that the U.S. and global IT markets will recover in 2010 is a faltering tech market due to a double-dip recession that returns in 2010 after a brief two- to three-quarter economic recovery," the report reads. "Should this happen, U.S. tech purchases would decline by 3% to 4% in 2010, with a second-half decline offsetting a first-half tech revival."
Maybe if the economy has a double dip recession the politicians will learn that their stimulus plans and the continued inflationary policy of the Fed are bad ideas. By then I think it will be too late, the dollar is on a fast pace to destruction. Perhaps that's Obama's job creation plan, debase the currency so much that it will be too expensive to outsource to Indian and Russian labor. Delaying a market correction will only make it worse, Government intervention cause and prolonged the Great Depression.
The "real" (u-6) unemployment rate is about 17.5%, because the official rate only counts those looking for work. So even if 17.5% of all IT workers were laid off, 82.5% still have their jobs, so yes, it is the same for "most". I got axed along with a significant portion of my department (25%) in May when they decided to outsource a lot of that work to India, but rather than collect unemployment or bitch about it I started my own company. Head still above water...
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Some people predict a second lag down. I won't be surprised if the article has been published in highest point of this year. Looking at VIX (scare factor) it could be the case.
I think Forrester is being overly optimistic. CIOs may be ready and willing to spend, but it does not mean the business (read: owner, CEO/Board, CFO) are going to jump on the bandwagon. Each purchase/hire will need to undergo a serious cost-benefit evaluation, and the lowest possible dollar paid. This is a result not only of the recession of the past year-plus, but also the very real and serious concerns businesses have of what upcoming legislation (and associated regulatory environments) is going to cost them.
Same here. I was unaffected, making $45K a year, putting into a 401K, getting decent health benefits while doing tech work for a bank (of all places) until I was laid off. We're now in mid-foreclosure. I'm getting a paid sh!t wage doing warranty repair work about 10 hours a week and it's the only work I've been able to find since I was laid off last May. I've got no health benefits, I cashed out my 401K and what was left kept us in this house long enough to learn that the bank wasn't going to work with us at all... and a year ago I was telling my laid off friends how rock solid my job was. Things went down hill fast. NotQuiteReal, you're making yourself sound like an ignorant, arrogant ass.
This morning the bean counters at NPR were figuring it was closer to 19%. Gotta make it all look good to the public though don't we.
Much easier said if you were employed mid-year 2008 and remained so throughout the 'downturn'.
That 'downturn' hurt, bad. Being out of work for 6 months would have been nice, but there were weeks at a time when there were no tech related positions, and nobody was interested in hiring someone with "professional" work experience for even tasks such as menial labor or food service. Good luck finding work out of your general area, too: my observation has been that there are so many IT types out of work, most places aren't even bothering to interview non-locals. There are just too many qualified applicants to pick from locally.
(I suspect concern that I would "up and leave" at the drop of a hat/promise of decent employment.) It's been 2 years, and at this point, I suspect there's not an end in sight due to the extended sabbatical.
The most extravegant thing I've bought since around March 08 was the occasional six pack of beer - maybe every other month. So yeah, that's not a terribly "good position".
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The U.S. job situation is made further worse by population growth, which is currently running around 1% annually in the U.S. (~3 million per year). After adjusting for deaths and retires, that necessitates, on average, an additional 100,000 - 150,000 new jobs to be created each month just to stay even.
Or to put it another way, in the 00s decade, there was roughly zero net job growth - there are about as many jobs today as back in 2000, but the U.S. population has grown by about 25+ million in that same time. Many of the jobs that exist today tend to pay less, when adjusted for inflation, than jobs did back 10 years ago.
Ron
It's not actually made worse by population growth, which is trivially demonstrable: if it were true, then we would all be unemployed right now, because at the time of the 13 colonies there were way fewer people than now. Where did all the new jobs come from?
In fact, every time the population grows, demand grows. Sure we need new jobs for them, but we also need new stores, new dry-cleaners, new wineries, new restaurants and a bunch of other stuff. On average population growth is job neutral.
The only problem is when you get an increase of workers in an area that doesn't need them. If somehow 10 million doctors moved to the US, it would cause problems. This should be easy to see, if you think about it a bit. Those doctors would need to retrain themselves in order to fit in to the economy (or the doctors they are replacing would).
Qxe4
If you have an established career, then it's merely difficult (but not impossible) to find a good job these days. New grads have it worse than everyone else in this economy... not only do they have to compete with each other, but they also have to compete with hordes of other people who have years of experience and are clamoring for the same jobs as the grads because they are desperate. I was told that a degree would give me a huge advantage, only to graduate right in time for this huge recession. (or minor depression, depending on who you talk to) I blame the university for lying to me just as much as I blame myself for actually believing them. New grads can send out a million resumes for all the good it would do, and it's not going to make much of a difference if there's a huge glut of unemployed workers with real-world experience on the job market. It's easy to lose hope and stop trying after 6 months or more of no results. These days, employers have all the advantages and can afford to be choosy.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
100,000 - 150,000 new jobs to be created each month just to stay even.
No, what you need is more wealth.
That is, you will need the resources those people will consume over their lifetime: food, textiles, space, vehicles, energy, and so forth. Plus, those people need to have it.
Of course, a sensible thing to ask of those people is to do something in return for being given those resources, e.g. get a job. But that's not a necessity.
Imagine you had robots who could do all the work we need humans for now, and because they were well built, we only rarely needed to repair, dispose and replace them. And the robot nerds volunteer to do this work on behalf of all of society.
Then there's no need for more jobs just because you have more people. Maybe one job per n people, but n >> 1.
Point being: there's no inherent value in jobs, because your job can be doing something that doesn't have any inherent value. The classical example being "9-1: dig ditch; 1-5: fill it again". What has value is the resources people want.
It's trivially demonstrable by counting the number of people working that our population has 25 million more people not working now than in the year 2000.
Clearly something changed in the last 10 years compared to the previous 200.