Statistics mask tough job market
Published: 19 Aug 2004 16:40 BST
Halcyon days of the dot-com
Even with the lower unemployment statistics, technology professionals enjoyed a better job market in the years the Internet began to take off. The unemployment level for computer-related occupations -- a class of jobs similar to the Labor Department's current category of computer and math occupations -- remained below 2 percent from 1994 to 2000.
Still, there are sound reasons for growing optimism among tech professionals, said Kevin Knaul, executive vice president for the information technology and technology practice at staffing firm Hudson. The number of Hudson tech consultants on contract with North American clients jumped 19 percent from May to July, to a total of 980. Most of those tech professionals were given assignments in the United States, Knaul said.
In addition, Hudson's revenue for permanently placing technology talent more than doubled from the first quarter of the year to the second quarter. "There's no question there's been an increase in demand for our services," he said.
The company uses its research to create an index of confidence in the employment market, and the numbers have risen in recent months for IT workers. The measure hit 112.1 in July, up 4 points from June and 11 points from May. According to Hudson, IT workers were more upbeat about the job situation than US workers overall -- Hudson's national index for July was 108.4.
Knaul argued that techies have calmed down about offshoring, the practice of sending technology jobs and other sorts of work to lower-cost countries. Although defenders of offshoring say it benefits the United States as a whole, a number of technology worker advocates have worried that the trend threatens jobs and even the country's long-term leadership in the field. "We've seen that some of that is certainly hype, and some of that is blown out of proportion," Knaul said.
John McCarthy, analyst with Forrester Research, said his oft-quoted projection that 3.3 million services jobs would shift overseas by 2015 has been misrepresented to paint a more alarmist picture. Even so, in an update to the research this year, McCarthy increased his estimate of near-term lost jobs by some 240,000. By 2005, an estimated 830,000 positions will have moved offshore, according to Forrester.
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