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Tech Unemployment Rising In Some Categories (dice.com)
Nerval's Lobster writes: The technology industry's unemployment rate crept up to 3.0 percent in the third quarter of 2015, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Although that represents an increase from the second quarter, when tech unemployment stood at 2.0 percent, it's nonetheless lower than the 5.2 percent unemployment rate for the U.S. labor market as a whole. Despite that relatively low rate, however, many technology segments saw an accompanying rise in joblessness. (Dice link) Web developers, for example, saw their collective unemployment rate hit 5.10 percent, up from 3.70 percent in the same quarter last year. Computer systems analysts, programmers, network and systems administrators, software developers, and computer & information systems managers likewise experienced a slight rise in unemployment on a year-over-year basis.
Great it's all going according to plan.
... why we need all those H1B visas: to bring tech unemployment more in line with US unemployment overall. Unemployment inequality affects us all.
Whenever somebody uses the U3 unemployment numbers for any purpose that doesn't involve sarcasm or irony, their thoughts are not to be taken seriously. Literally the only purpose of mentioning U3 is political propaganda - the calculation methods divorce it completely and irrevocably from any potential honest use in discussing employment rates.
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In the first dotcom boom, and now the social media/app boom, these same trends started appearing towards the end of each up-cycle:
- Massive hiring of anyone who could spell HTML, barely manage a server farm, or cobble together an application starts dropping.
- Computer science enrollment at universities hit all time highs. (The subsequent bust reverses this trend.)
- The tech news gets wackier every day, as even the dumbest ideas are getting VC funding, IPOing or getting acquired by a huge corporation.
- Job hopping increases, especially towards the top of the boom. (This also explains the voluntary resignation increases.) This is just people hopping for the next crazy salary increase or extra perk, and it decreases during the bust as people are happy to be working.
I've managed to stay employed continuously through 2 of these cycles, and I'm hoping my luck holds out. I think the key is simple -- don't suck at your job. :-) I'm not claiming to be a genius or rockstar by any means (and I think the rockstar moniker is stupid,) but I have had a solid track record and very good work experience grounded in fundamentals. Each of these booms has produced a legion of people who are semi-competent but not exactly suited for the job, and they have all been drawn in by the money. Remember paper MCSEs and certification bootcamps? This boom is all about apps, so it's code academies now -- 9 weeks and you're a rockstar developer writing the latest iPhone sensation!
I think the spikes in unemployment can be explained partially by the boom fizzling, but the systems and network administrator increase is likely due to the cloud shift. Not everything is suited to a public cloud, but enough places will see a benefit in moving their stuff that offsets the control they have in locally owned systems. Again, I think (hope, that is, since I'm in systems engineering) that solid people will be retained either as architects or sysadmins in complex environments. What I do think will start to go away is the hyper-specialists like DBAs of one flavor of database, or VSphere administrators, or SAN/storage guys. As more companies try to get away from proprietary stuff, or shift things offsite, that insanely deep knowledge of EMC, VMWare, Cisco, etc. to the exclusion of everything else is going to be less sought after. Someone who can glue all the parts together regardless of who owns them or where they are will still be able to find work. Hopefully. :-)