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Good Economy? Tech Layoffs Are Up
Nerval's Lobster writes: If you look at the broad numbers produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy seems great, especially for the tech industry: The unemployment rate for tech pros currently stands at 2.1 percent, down from 2.3 percent in the first quarter. However, that dip isn't uniform for all sectors: The unemployment rate for Web developers climbed from 2.1 percent to 3.1 percent. Computer support specialists, network and systems administrators, computer & information systems managers, and database administrators also saw their respective unemployment rates rising slightly. Layoffs and discharges for the tech industry as a whole rose slightly in April and May (the latest months for which the BLS had numbers), to an average of 441,500 employees per month. That's higher than the first quarter, when layoffs and discharges averaged 424,300 per month. That's not to say we're on the verge of a collapse, bubble, or other economic shock, but it's definitely not great times for everybody.
The more computer geeks end in the streets the better. They deserve it. When they helped destroying the lives of entire families because computers and robots were taking the place of people, they laughed "you can't stop progress, candle-makers". Now it's them getting the short end of the stick and we're glad. You ever see any of those stupid nerds asking for change in the street, knife him in the guts.
Well, a lot of it is. So much stuff is plug and play these days, or is easily configured to the point that you don't really need to be an expert to do it that you need fewer and/or cheaper people - or you can have people in India do it remotely. Welcome to the 21st century, where you will reap what you have sown.
We in the tech industry may be taking it for granted that, by and large, we can hopscotch from job to job however it suits us. In the broader U.S. economy, with official unemployment still above 5%, underemployment around 11%, certain communities (such as poor, minority urban neighborhoods) well above that, and wages more or less flat or declining for the past decade, I would argue we should count our blessings. That also does not consider the situation in, say, most of the rest of the world, where the statistics paint a worse picture.
In any event, the fluctuations in the unemployment rate and layoff figures month-to-month are pretty meaningless. You still like to have the granularity of month-to-month datapoints, but the broader trends are revealed only in longer timescales.
Well, seeing as an unemployment rate of 3% or less is considered "full employment", this story is just another bullshit blown-out-of-proportion negative hit piece. Everyone gathers around to say it's so horrible, the government ought to do something, etc. I would ordinarily write this kind of crap off due to Slashdot's ridiculously bad editors, but in this case it seems it is another 'jobs' story required by Dice.com to add value to this website by helping to gather data. The article represents nothing but meaningless noise on a graph.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
No, the reason there is increasing unemployment while also a shortage is because to become a tech worker you just have to collect a degree. To become a useful tech worker, you have to actually have some skills.
Lots of people want to become tech workers because of the promise of a quick fortune. A limited number will have actual skills (but without the passion) and might find a comfortable niche where they can charge out banker sort of rates for their services. A small number won't have any tech skills but will recognise this early and move into management before they are found out. A much larger number aren't even smart enough to figure out how little they know and get stuck complaining until they eventually attach themselves to a clueless corporation awash with money.
In the alternate world of people who work in tech because they enjoy it and can actually get things done, there is a huge shortage.
So the news here is that absolute Web Developer unemployment went from 2.1% to 3.1% and tech layoff rose by ~5%. That is a fluctuation of 1 month! Oh noes! What will we do!? That is ONE MONTH you statistically challenged clod.
And a summer month at that, when I assume new grads are coming into the market.
Do you guys seriously have the gall to call that journalism?
It's easy to blame the last two presidents, but they're powerless compared to those who are really responsible for the current awful state of the global economy: Baby Boomers.
The Baby Boomers in the United States inherited one of the most successful, stable, equitable economies to have ever existed. Jobs were plentiful, innovation was rapid, inflation was minimal, and the economic machine ran very smoothly.
The earliest Baby Boomers started getting real influence within academia and government starting in the late 1960s, and within business starting in the early 1970s. The 1960s were a decade of wonder, even to the point of getting humans to the moon, not thanks to the effort of the Baby Boomers, but thanks to the effort of the generations who came before them. Almost as soon as the Baby Boomers started getting seriously involved in governance of the nation, of its academia, and of its businesses, things started going to hell.
Baby Boomers in general are best described as a "rotten" generation. They are very self-centered, with massive egos, and a complete lack of sensibility. They are sure they are right, even then they're obviously and hopelessly wrong, and will remain oblivious (or wilfully ignorant) to the point of disaster.
The 1970s were the first disaster caused by the Baby Boomers. Their Middle Eastern policies shot up the price of oil, harming the economy. They also managed to wreck the finances of cities like New York and Detroit. I know that some will say, "But Nixon wasn't a Baby Boomer!", yet in many ways he was very much one of them in attitude and mindset; he was just born somewhat earlier. That is why he was elected by the Baby Boomers, who made up the majority of the electorate at the time. His age aside, he was one of them, for all intents and purposes.
This progressed into the 1980s. The stereotype of the greedy, manipulative yuppie was nothing more than a description of the Baby Boomers who, due to their numbers, had taken control of much of business and government at that point. Economically, the 1980s were shameful, with major stock market crashes, recession, and finally at the end of the decade the imposition of "free" trade.
The 1990s saw the beginning of the unravelling of the economy due to the mismanagement of it by the Baby Boomers. Some may see most of the 1990s as having been economically good years, but the reality is that they were much worse than they could have been. The rise of the PC and the Internet during this decade could have improved the economy drastically, had their economic effects not been neutered by Baby Boomers.
The 2000s saw the complete unravelling of the economy due to the terrible management of the Baby Boomers. The price of a basic academic education spiralled out of control, thanks to the Baby Boomers who poorly managed such institutions, as well as the student loan industry. The economy was in tatters, with jobs being sent out of the country rapidly, yet without any sort of replacement jobs being created. Despite their earlier resistance to the Vietnam War when they were at risk of being sent to fight, Baby Boomers were very eager to start multiple foreign warzones now that they were in command and sending others off to die. We're all very well aware of how poorly the Baby Boomers ran the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; they were complete disasters, and we're still dealing with the fallout even today.
Now half-way through the 2010s, we still see the Baby Boomers doing damage to our institutions, businesses, and economy as a whole. One thing to consider now is that their offspring, born in the 1980s, are now themselves getting into positions of power. Bred to have very much the same "rotten" attitude and mindset of their parents, we'll only see the disasters caused by the Baby Boomers prolonged by the Millennials that the Baby Boomers spawned.
Half a century ago, it would have been unimaginable for an entire generation to have been given so much, yet to have turned around and systematically squandered and destroyed it. But that's exactly what we saw the Baby Boomers do!
Obama has done a pretty good job
...of lying about unemployment, just like his predecessors before him. The published rate is not based on the inverse of the workforce participation rate. It is, frankly, invented, by ignoring large swaths of people who are out of work but not eligible to collect any unemployment benefits.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yea, by relaxing the rules for disability claims he took almost two million people out of the labor force (which went a long ways towards cooking the unemployment rate) while also putting doing a double whammy on Social Security (instead of contributing, all those people are draining it). Great job.
Well, how do you want to measure economic health?
GDP is up ~8.5% since 2008.
DJIA is up ~18.5% since 2008.
Unemployment is down ~2% across the board since 2008.
Average hourly wage is up ~4% (Although the MEDIAN seasonally adjusted wage is down slightly, perhaps indicating a widening gap in wages?)
Perhaps the reason tech related jobs are doing relatively poorly is because they are too easily outsourced. If it doesn't matter where you are physically when you do your job, then you are literally competing with the entire planet for that job.
=Smidge=
For his first two years, we were lucky we didn't up in a 2nd great depression. Fraud in bond ratings associated with what should have been mortgage junk bonds singlehandedly brought business lending to a halt.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You can't blame that on republicans obstructing his agenda when his party had full control of the house, senate, and white house.
You can blame it on Republicans obstructing the Democrat agenda when they were pushing Single-Payer Health care. This was actually the Republican health reform plan, which makes it hilarious how hard they fought against it. We couldn't have proper national health care because of the Republicans — the Democrats already tried that and the Republicans successfully stopped it. No big surprise; the insurance companies were never going to go for that, and it's corporations which truly run this country. One dollar, one vote.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I have a bridge with an ocean view to sell you. http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...
"We just can't find American tech workers anymore," repeated Mark Zuckerberg to Congress. "And here are some big campaign donations to prove my point."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
You shouldn't include children or college students or retired people or stay at home mothers in the unemployment rate. These are people who do not participate in the workforce because they are doing other things instead.
That's why they don't affect the workforce participation rate, which measures what percentage of people who normally work aren't working. Try again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Apparently you do not realize that anyone's definition of the unemployment rate is flawed and either includes or excludes people. It isn't a real number, it is something like the bill in an Italian restaurant (if I recall Douglas Adams correctly).
And Obama didn't come up with the prescription the government uses, it was in use well before him.
I admit Obama isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this isn't his fault, he isn't lying about this.
The unemployment rate for tech pros currently stands at 2.1 percent, down from 2.3 percent in the first quarter. However, that dip isn't uniform for all sectors: The unemployment rate for Web developers climbed from 2.1 percent to 3.1 percent.
A 1% or less change pretty much amounts to statistical noise. It is meaningless. That is almost certainly well within the amount of normal variation we should expect over short time periods. Furthermore those unemployment figures are roughly half that of the 5-6% unemployment rate currently enjoyed by the overall economy. Basically a 2-3% unemployment rate is as close as you ever get to full employment. It doesn't get better than that.
Right, by kicking the can down the road, and making exactly ZERO reforms, increasing the perverse incentives that caused the crash in the first place, we have made everything better, FOREVER.
Poor health did. All he did was pick up the slack assclowns like Scott Walker left with their right wing blather so we didn't have 2 mil new homeless.
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look to the republican debate last night: "less government regulation"
the democrats have been complicit in the failure that led to 2008 only when they have gone along willingly with the republican wet dreams about how less government regulation makes magic better world: of companies not punished for polluting, companies not punished for tanking the economy, companies not punished for screwing up the food supply, etc.
the democrats bear about as much responsibility as the guy who handed the murderer the gun. who is the real culprit here? which party loves, loves, loves less regulation?
that doesn't mean all regulation is good. some regulation sucks and needs to be thrown out. but the people behind the purse books don't fucking care about healthy environment, food, economy, etc., they want all regulation destroyed, evne the good and important parts. they just care about making as much money as they fucking can right now, fuck the rest. fuck your grandkids, fuck the poor and middle class. fuck them all: i'm making money, screw you. and which party do such people give most too and which party whines loudest about "evil regulations?"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I agree. By almost any metric you choose to use since he came into office, with possibly the exception of the national debt, we are better off now. I remember the end of Bush's term well and it was quite fucking scary.
What a lot of people do not understand was that in 2008, we were on a precipice.
The years of using risky mortgages as an investment vehicle
The years of running the presses for emergency appropriations
The years of people living off their credit cards and re-fi's
And even though that was insanity enough, fighting war on two fronts at the same time as reducing taxes (for some) ranks in my book as fiscal attempted suicide.
2008 could have been the year that the Great depression of the 1930's could have been dwarfed.
So yes - despite some folks visceral hatred of the "Magic Negro" and his appointees and cabinet, something amazing happened. Despite an amazing amount of money that vanished into thin air, despite a decade of financial voodoo, we got through it with a lot less pain than it looked like we were due.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
For his first two years, we were lucky we didn't up in a 2nd great depression. Fraud in bond ratings associated with what should have been mortgage junk bonds singlehandedly brought business lending to a halt.
I wouldn't say single-handedly, but it certainly was a major contributor. Unfortunately no one was really punished for all that fraud; not just by the ratings agencies but by loan originators and the banks that sold mortgage backed securities. Eric Holder institutionalized "too big to jail", basically saying that since the crimes were so immense, and their effects so far reaching, we couldn't hold anyone accountable for fear of destroying the system. He is now back at his old firm Covington & Burling, where they literally saved his office for him while he was Attorney General. He is now representing the very same banks that he would not prosecute while in office.
The fix is in. We can argue about whether Obama's actions were good or bad, or helped or didn't, or were too much or not enough. But the real issue is that the system has been captured, and we can't remove the parasite without killing the host (or so we're told, anyway).
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
"Workforce participation rate" is a scam. Why are we better off when larger percentages of the population are working? Would we be better off as a society if every adult man and woman was working full time? The "workforce participation" rate was much lower in the golden '50's and '60's than it is today, yet we somehow managed to survive as a society.
When did a desire for 100% workforce participation become the new normal? You've got to know when you're being played.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Apparently, you do not remember the numerous speeches which both Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd made in the 2003-2007 range stating that not only was there nothing wrong with the housing/mortgage market, but that the market was in great shape. They made such speeches every time someone proposed that something be done to prevent the coming meltdown. Their insistence that the housing mortgage market was doing better than fine and that those trying to fix it were just making partisan points played a large role in the problem not getting addressed before things blew up. I know you won't believe that since I have observed that you believe that Democrats are the font of all good and Republicans do everything with evil motives.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
you completely glossed over the part where the republicans want less regulation the most. since reagan this is their wet dream. that you can point to democratic morons who go along with their fantasy does not absolve the party most responsible for the deregulation push
"the republicans have been shouting the most about deregulation for the longest time, by many multiples"
"well, i found some democrat morons who went along with that, so let's shift all blame to them"
partisan blindness: negate all critical thinking on the topic, just shift all blame to the party you hate the most, forget actually making sense or intellectual honesty on the topic
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The size of the economy is measured in constant dollars, growth is measured in percent. That's how it's always done, so labeling it is a bit unnecessary and redundant.
You'll notice that economic growth has ALWAYS gotten worse under the EVERY democrat administration's budgets
> The actual facts [cnn.com] show you have that backwards
Did you LOOK at that page before linking to it? Your CNN link says that median income improved under Reagan, Bush, etc. So if you choose to trust that CNN is giveaway you correct numbers, you now know that traditional republican policies increase incomes.
Your second link is garbage. The numbers overall are WAY too high especially their democrat numbers; it looks like they treated inflation as growth rather than using constant dollars. Really they showed that inflation is higher under democrat policies, and presented that as if it were a good thing. Secondly, a president's first budget takes effect a year after they are inaugurated . (The effects start to be visible about a year later). The second link assigns the results during 2009, for example, to Obama - while Bush's budget was still in effect. That's misleading. The year Bush took office, we were operating under Clinton's budget, Clinton's policies. The state of the economy isn't much effected by the guy who just got elected, it's much more effected by the federal budget policies we're operating under.
Yes, it is his fault, because going in, in 2009, he claimed he was going to make government transparent. Of course, he continued the same policies of obfuscation and deceit, plus adding a few of his own.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Only the median wage and the minimum wage are relevant.
As an aside, the minimum wage has always been $0 an hour.
The "get over it" comment wasn't very diplomatic, but on the other side you already had Republican leaders explicitly stating that their primary goal was to prevent a second Obama presidency. When politics trumps good government, that's not good for the nation.
Truth is, the Republican Party has pretty well committed to ensuring that nothing Obama proposes should get done and everything that he does do should be undone to the point that it seems that they want his historical legacy to be as if he'd never been. And when it comes to "uncompromising", most of the people who brag about being "uncompromising" seem to be on the Conservative side. Uncompromising isn't the virtue they pretend it is. We're trying to run a country, not fight Satan himself. Although listening to some you'd be hard-pressed to tell.
The partisan spiral seems to have started with Newt Gingrich and the (uncompromising) Moral Majority. Both sides have taken their turns as their respective stars rise and set, but it really needs to stop.
Unfortunately no one was really punished for all that fraud; not just by the ratings agencies but by loan originators and the banks that sold mortgage backed securities.
I remember the savings and loan crisis and that's the reaction I wanted to see. Prosecutions in the hundreds and thousands, enough to send a giant shudder of fear through the financial industry and get them back to a more conservative posture. Instead we gave them a big pass, so of course the lesson they took from that was "go ahead and do it again, the profits outweigh the consequences".
Agreed - he said he wanted to work with the other side, but then whenever they met he was like "hey, I won, get over it!" and wouldn't compromise at all.
I'm a Libertarian, and that's not how it looked to someone who wasn't part of one of the major parties. Sure, he staked out a position on things he wanted, but as best I could tell he bent over nearly backwards trying to broker some kind of deal. The Republicans were so focused on not working with him they gave up an opportunity to get legislation passed that would actually move things farther towards their philosophy. Democrats are horrible negotiators because they believe in government, that always leads them to make compromises which often times give away too much.
I think his point was, in the 1950's half the population wasn't working, which is to say, women mostly stayed at home.
Today, we have closer to full participation and wages are lower in a relative sense.
It is great that women are now working, but it may have been a better world for us when only one person was working in a household.
Further, the point of technology is that people should not *have* to work. The problem is that the gains we are making with automation are just being used to simply not pay workers, as opposed to eliminating drudgery. We have a world were people don't have to work, but we still insist that they work to live.
We really should look at how we can come up with a basic income for people now that we can do so. There are some hurdles to that, because we can outstrip our ability to pay out if we say, reproduce too often, or even live too long, but I don't think there's a reason that people have to suffer today in Western countries simply because they can't work at a job where the human will actually do less than automation would.
No I'm talking about the fast recoveries in the 50's, 60's, 70's. But you're right Obama isn't doing *everything* he can to save the economy.
Because he wants to accomplish some of his campaign points and 8 years really isn't that long.
Yeah as we all know a topic That starts with "Good Economy" is not about the economy.
Why what could be the reason for the off topic mods.
Give credit where credit is due, or at least go back to whining about the confederate flag, his birth certificate, or how gay's getting married dstroys the sanctity of your 5th marriage.
Quick" Mod this down to show you diagree with it!.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.