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Report Cites Highest IT Job Growth In 4 Years

Posted by Soulskill on from the job-precipitation-from-the-cloud dept.

netbuzz writes "Employment research firm Foote Partners says U.S. labor statistics from last month reveal an increase of some 18,200 jobs in IT, which represents the largest such monthly jump since 2008. 'The overall employment situation in the U.S. is lackluster, in fact this is the fifth consecutive month of subpar results,' says David Foote. 'But the fact that more than 18,000 new jobs were created last month for people with significant IT skills and experience — and nearly 57,000 new jobs added in the past three months — is incredibly good news.'"

27 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Isn't the second derivative negative? by feedayeen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    57 thousand new jobs in the last 3 months, with 18 thousand last month. This leaves 39k for the other 2 months, netting an average growth rate of 19.5k jobs/month for those 2, in other words, the rate of growth is is nearly 10% slower than it was a month ago.

  2. In real jobs or fake ones? by crazyjj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is this report counting the *real* programming and IT jobs, or just the ones that companies post with ridiculous qualifications, just so they can run to Congress and claim they can't find American personnel to fill them and get more H1-B visas?

    --
    What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
    1. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by stanlyb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The truth is, if there is an ad, and if this ad stays for longer than 1 month, then it is fake ad, and there is no real need for this job position.

    2. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by jeauxkewl · · Score: 3, Informative

      I just used my mod points or I'd have modded this one up. Don't forget some companies are laying people off and moving jobs to lower paying areas of the country where they can hire less experienced folks at lower wages. They lay off and then re-hire and claim job creation.

    3. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by CastrTroy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      IT is a stupid classification anyway. It includes way too many different types of jobs. It could include everything from people working at the IT help desk all the way to people designing operating systems. That would be like looking at the "manufacturing sector" but also including the people who design the machines the manufacturing plants use. Sure an increase in manufacturing jobs means they need more machines, but you still shouldn't count them in the same lot.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    4. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by Chrono11901 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is extremely difficult to find highly skilled mid to senior level software engineers (here in NYC at least) unless you plan to pay over the top to seal someone away from another company. It seems to take at minimum a month to find someone, and thats if your a company with good benefits and great salary

    5. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by jrj102 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I've filled a dozen or so positions in the last 4 years, most of them took 2-3 months to find a qualified applicant. Only once did I hire someone inside of a month. So while I am not arguing that there are a lot of fake job ads out there, the assertion that any 30+ day aged ad is fake is demonstrably false. Larger companies take time to fill positions, and with the economy slumping there is pressure to find exactly the right applicant even if that means the spot lay unfilled for a couple months (often at great pain) rather than hire someone "with potential" as was the common practice 5-10 years ago.

      --
      jrjBlog
    6. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As the perspective from one of those senior level software engineers, for a job worth taking, I almost certainly have to move. My kids go to yet another school, my wife has a pile of friends that become facebook aquaintences, and I am chin deep in new work for however long. If you want me to deal with that, you are going to pay me. Not only pay me what I am worth, but also for the hassle of having to deal with all of the drama that goes with it. I find most places are simply not willing to accommodate.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    7. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by afidel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      See, to me your post is indicative of exactly what's wrong in IT hiring today. If you're looking for exactly the "right" person it probably means your making people play buzzword bingo. This is the lazy way to hire IT people and it does nothing to assure that you actually get a good candidate. Instead you need to hire someone with the correct level of experience for the job, some familiarity with subject matter of the position, and the ability to learn. That is ALL the qualification you should realistically need since even if they've used the exact same product at the exact same version level it's likely that your environment has enough differences to their previous experience that it might as well have been a different product. It's never taken me more than two weeks to hire someone. In fact the only position at my employer I would have trouble filling quickly is the one we outsourced after having four people in 3 years fail in our environment (we needed someone with Oracle and MS SQL experience and knowledge of our ERP platform, very very niche).

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    8. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by wjousts · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And a 2% yearly bump is really (barely) treating water. Inflation is usually more than that.

    9. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by AuMatar · · Score: 2

      It's not just people playing Buzzword Bingo. It's just hard to find *good* senior devs. At the startup I last worked for, we would interview a dozen people, be willing to hire maybe 3 of them, and get turned down by most of them. If you're looking for above average candidates (and I don't want to bother with below average ones) then you're going to have a wait on your hands. We had constant open recs, but it took months to fill one.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    10. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by AF_Cheddar_Head · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I appreciate your honesty and all but you do realize where those proven senior engineers come from don't you?

      If no one is willing to take a chance on the junior guy he leaves the field and you might have missed hiring that superstar that will stay loyal to your company and not jump at the first chance to make a few extra dollars.

      I work at my current job for a bit less just because they took that chance. That and I love the fact I work so many different projects in a year.

      Go ahead call me a chump for having that loyalty when companies will drop you in a heartbeat but they did take a chance on me.

    11. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 2

      HR departments are used to the great recessions still when they had 100 applicants for each job posted. They are used to offering $40,000 a year, no relocation, and requiring 6 years of experience and prefering a masters degree, because frankly from 2008 - 2011 people out of work would jump at it!

      It is now ballencing out but the companies are cheapskates and accountants and HR people are willing to wait it out to find somebody desperate who will jump. Also realize in many ways people are paid less than they were 10 years ago. Sure it might seem crap to you but demand and salaries have really been going down and employers have little reason to offer you more like I described above.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    12. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      So while I am not arguing that there are a lot of fake job ads out there,

      One type of fake job listing is the kind where they already have someone they want to hire for the job, but the company has a requirement that the job be posted. This is very common in academia, but it happens in other sectors as well.

      It's a way of "promoting" someone at a company that has a freeze on raises. The CEO says "no raises" but there's somebody's that's going to walk unless he gets 10% more. A new job is listed with a salary of 10% more, the person puts in his application and all other applications that come in go into the trash.

      Viola! The guy gets his raise and the company gets to screw the rest of its workforce. An announcement is made that employee contributions to the health care plan will be going up by 50%. The CEO gets a $200k bonus and stock options for "holding down costs". Everybody goes home happy except the people who work for a living. The guy who got the 10% pay bump thinks he's on top of the world until he learns that 2 positions were eliminated that are now his responsibility so he has to work 70 hour weeks at no overtime, since the new position is "salaried". The term used in Human Resources is "exempt", as in Q: "Why do I have to work an additional 30 hours a week at no extra pay?" A: "Because, Mr Dumb Sonofabitch, you are exempt".

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    13. Re:In real jobs or fake ones? by russotto · · Score: 2

      You trolling?

      He's using the name Billy Gates, and he's praising MBAs and salespeople on Slashdot. You couldn't get better trollsign without a bridge.

  3. Good News, Everyone! by ackthpt · · Score: 2

    They're hiring more IT professionals to feed to crocodiles and we have a contract to deliver them!

    they can bite my shiny, metal cabinet

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  4. Read the fine print by smooth+wombat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    for people with significant IT skills and experience

    And the only way to get most of those skills or experience is to be employed in the industry and working for companies who are willing to train you. People coming out of school or switching careers need not apply.

    This goes along with the 2012 report from ManPower (which just came out) which says more than half of the U.S. employers surveyed say their pay scales are not in line with what IT workers want, which makes it hard to attract and retain staff.

    The report goes on to say that many companies have scaled back on recruitment benefits such as relocation costs.

    In summary, you need to have years of experience in cutting-edge technology, willing to work for pay which employers admit isn't up to par and able to pay for your own relocation.

    Gee, wonder why people are saying they can't find people to fill positions.

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    1. Re:Read the fine print by jrj102 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is a fair point. The job market is actually quite good if you have a decade or two of experience, but it's abysmal if you're just starting your career. It's hard to notice the latter when you continue to get headhunters calling a couple times a week, so it's no wonder you're seeing such diametrically opposed views in this thread with regard to the state of the economy.

      --
      jrjBlog
    2. Re:Read the fine print by KingMotley · · Score: 2

      To be fair, I have 5 new job listings in my email from headhunters, and I haven't had my resume online in the past 2 years. They are going that far back to find candidates, granted however, only 1 of those 5 is even close to my pay range -- the rest are looking for about half what I would ask, and while I have three times the experience they want, the pay 4 of 5 are offering is about what I was making straight out of college -- 20 years ago.

    3. Re:Read the fine print by KingMotley · · Score: 2

      Sorry, that should have said 5 new job listings TODAY. I get between 3-10 a day, every day.

  5. A demotion is a "new" job. by PeanutButterBreath · · Score: 2

    "Incredibly good news" should be some combination of rising employment and rising incomes.

  6. Re:Job growth like it's 1999. by N0Man74 · · Score: 3, Funny

    When I see job growth return to 1999 levels, then I will think things are getting better.

    If only there were a Y2.012K bug... If only software had adopted the Mayan calendar!

  7. The true jobs picture.... by erp_consultant · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Despite the somewhat rosy job numbers there is a sobering reality in today's job market. If you are very experienced and have good contacts there are lots of jobs right now in IT. I get emails from recruiters every week it seems. But if you are just out of school or are not highly specialized then your options are much more limited because now you are competing against cheap foreign labor for programming jobs. Many times I have sat in meetings where we are looking at the resume of a recent grad and quickly realize that we could hire someone from India for 1/3 the price. Of course the quality of the work from the people in India is often sub par (at least in my experience) but to the people that control the money it looks like a no brainer. They hire the person from India. It's only when you gain more experience and skills that are very hard to find that the India option is no longer viable. At that point you have more control over how much you can charge for your services and potential employers have a vastly smaller pool of people to choose from. The challenge for the new grads is how to bridge that gap and it's a vexing problem. Gone are the days when IBM would hire you out of college and give you lots of training and a job for life. Now they expect you to already have the skills and you're only one bad quarter from getting laid off.

  8. You mean unsustainable speculative bubbles? by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When I see job growth return to 1999 levels, then I will think things are getting better.

    So you think things will be better if/when we see the fictitious job growth levels powered up by the dot-com speculative bubble, the time when it was possible for any greenhorn to get paid $60-70K a year just for writing html????? You are an interesting creature.

    I for one prefer the status quo in IT/Software than the ridiculous dot-com bubble times. I would also say we are saturated - we have quite a few in IT/Software that are really not cut for this (testament of this is the shitload of crappy monkey code that exists despite all the advances we have made in the art and science of developing software.)

    1. Re:You mean unsustainable speculative bubbles? by roc97007 · · Score: 2

      Well, one of the problems with crappy monkey code is that after it's in place it takes an Act of God (or a sufficient number of very public, embarrassing failures) to get it removed. Crappy monkey code tends to breed. Code that's not *quite* crappy enough to require action, or code that provides crappy, unreliable resources that just aren't important enough to require attention, tend to survive in an Darwinian way.

      Crappy monkey code can even reproduce by binary fission, like bacteria, through code reuse. "I know it's crappy monkey code, but it's easier to reuse it than rewrite it. Besides, IT is already used to rebooting the machines once a month."

      (And thanks, "crappy monkey code" is my new favorite term.)

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    2. Re:You mean unsustainable speculative bubbles? by JDG1980 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Funny how whenever regular employees get paid and treated well it's an "unsustainable bubble", but when executives get millions of dollars a year it's just business as usual.

  9. Yet they still can't fill the damn things by nighthawk243 · · Score: 2

    New jobs added, yes... but I bet they're still not filling them because of a huge disconnect between IT and Recruiting/HR. "We need MOAR H1B's!!!!" -Battle cry of every company inept at hiring IT talent.