The unemployment rate in the U.S. continues to trend up, and the tech sector certainly hasn’t been spared from the overall economic turmoil.
We’ve noticed a general downward trend in our monthly tech job listings on CrunchBoard over the last year, too, which confirms what is already obvious – there’s less hiring going on out there.
A year ago 100 – 120 job listings were added to CrunchBoard each month (which is consistent with the previous year’s trend of a steady 100+ listings/month). The number of new listings gradually declined and then fell significantly in November 2008, dropping from 68 to 37 listings. Things bottomed out in December with 22 listings, and have edged back up slightly since then (but certainly not enough to call it a turnaround).
We haven’t changed promotion of the site over the last year or changed the listing price, which would affect the data. Traffic to TechCrunch sites has risen steadily over this period.
CrunchBoard is a tiny site compared to Monster, Craigslist and others, and this data isn’t statistically relevant at all. But we’ll continue to share it to add to the data that’s available on the state of things during this troubled time.
Deadpool?
Hiring…
http://egghaus.com/jobs
(listing not shown: iPhone Developer, UE Designer – inquire)
Does that make me, you know, weird?
The jobs aren’t declining right now. They were in January but not now.
http://sfbay.cr...gslist.org/sof/
What’s actually happening is that the HR departments’ budgets are declining and rather than pay a couple hundred here they are paying $25 a post on CL. There are plenty of dev jobs on any given week day.
case closed.
No, I am sorry, I don’t think that is what is happening.
Jobs are disappearing.
At the end of the day, there is no free lunch. Someone ultimately has to pay the bill, and everyone else fights for a piece of it.
For most Web 2.0 companies that someone is the advertiser.
When the economy tanks, the advertiser will spend less on advertising.
When the advertiser spends less on advertising, the amount of money that everyone else has to fight over shrinks.
When the amount of money everyone has to fight over shrinks, then fewer people gets hired.
It is wishful thinking to expect programming jobs to remain robust in this recession. Bear Stearns, Lehman and all the other ivestment and commercial banks used to have thousands of developers on their payroll. They are now in the job market as well.
Here in India, we see many of the outsourcers like Accenture in difficulties because at the end of the day, someone pays the bill … and the people paying the bill have either disappeared or have lost 90% of their market vaue.
The only good news in all of this is that I hope it will inspire many developers to build great businesses for themselves. Most great technology companies were built in recessions.
From India
Anjali Sen
so not true , i can say from my personal experience the it job offering has shrunk over the past few months greatly
indeed.com’s data agrees: http://www.inde...nology-industry
My bad, I hadn’t seen crunchboard in a while. I thought it was still just jobs in norcal.
that indeed data is tracking the same trend, interesting. and far more statistically relevant. Clicks are way up, too, as more people fight for fewer jobs.
Sorry we haven’t posted jobs there.. it’s a great reminder.
We have 6 job openings at BillShrink!! In this economy, who doesn’t want to Shrink their Bills?www.billshrink.com/jobs
We’re hiring
2 Sr. Software engineers (Java or C++)
Marcom person who can handle all of our PR
Director of marketing
Product Manager
Business Analyst (analytics person
We’re paying referral fees, so if you know smart folks send them over!
With lots of companies suffering from diminishing revenues, it was just bound to happen. I wonder, how long is this going to last?
TechFilipino
Remember how long it took the government to acknowledge the “recession” we had all been living for well over a year? How much longer before they call this “severe recession” what to most of of peons feels like a true global depression? It has effected everything and everyone world wide, even the extremely wealthy. At least they can afford it.
The government may be will take some actions to this problem
Things beginning to show improvement?
Considering that the wave of mutilation extended to the HR departments of many companies, it’s not that far a jump to expect that kind of curve.
http://www.simp...s%2C+craigslist
A comparison or confirmation from Linkedin Jobs trending would be rather telling. Does Linkedin publish such numbers?
This might help tech job seekers stand out a bit:
A new free site (http://www.zTalent.com) was just launched that gives tech professionals an easy way to showcase their skills and substantiate the claims on their resume.
The way it works is that members earn reputation points for specific, demonstrated skills by answering, contributing, or reviewing technology test questions. The site is based on a Wikipedia-like community contribution.
zTalent was just launched and needs people to add more tests and test questions. Did I mention it was free?
Mike
inevitable evolution that technology would kill jobs. “more with less” is emphasized more and capitalized upon during a recession. dont count on those jobs coming back. the tech bubble has popped. time for tech workers to get there hands dirty…..literally, or merge with a promising startup.
An alternative title to this blog post would have been:
“February job postings up 90% since December low!”.
Sorry but I fail to understand something..
In US about 5% unemployment is considered “normal”..and now it’s about 8%..how does this 3% difference makes so much news?
Everybody says people are no spending..how Circuit City liquidation sale got over earlier when most people noticed that Prices were not cheap there and more importantly no returns, no warranty??
I visit many dealsights in a day and things are getting out of stock so fast I can’t even understand..within hours items are vanishing whether it’s a small item or big items like HDTV, Laptop etc..
People just want to talk and write ?? Sorry, I don’t understand..
As an IT job search engine, not only have we seen a significant decline in the number of jobs out there, but also a decline in salaries. You can check the trends for your specific skills and location at http://www.odin...rketstatcompare
We have some great jobs in London, contact me at marklong@abrs.com for further info.
we recently posted a couple of .NET dev jobs and got over 400 resumes and counting
[compared to about a year ago we'd maybe have gotten 50, if that]
Formal job postings have definitely declined in Boston. I track the market monthly and the market peaked in the second quarter of 2008. There were THREE TIMES as many postings across the board then as there are now . . .
http://beantown...march-2009.html
That said, the opportunities are still there, you just have to dig deeper, network better and compete harder.
Gene Babon
March: 100 listings = 100 * $200 = $20,000
April: 120 listings = 120 * $200 = $24,000
May: 94 listings = 94 * 200 = $18,800
June: 88 listings = 88 * 200 = $17,600
July: 85 listings = 85 * 200 = $17,000
August: 82 listings = 82 * 200 = $16,400
September: 77 listings = 77 * 200 = $15,400
October: 69 listings = 69 * 200 = $13,800
November: 38 listings = 38 * 200 = $7,600
December: 21 listings = 21* 200 = $4,200
January: 23 listings = 23 * 200 = $4,600
Feburary: 37 listings = 37 * 200 = $7,400
YTD: $166,800
As more and more people get laid off from tech companies, I hope the attitude towards the unemployed gets transformed towards the better.
In the period 2004 – 2008 before this whole financial mess began, some people did lose their jobs. Meanwhile, others didn’t, some who were in charge of hiring. Some of these judges who have the power to shape careers thought that only deadwood or incomptent people got downsized. They proclaimed this as gospel since they never once lost a job.
When you see and hear many Web 2.0 companies slashing jobs at the rate they are, you can’t conclude that all those let go are losers. Moreover, some of these firms proclaim they hire “only the best and brightest.”
I’m severely disappointed to hear that employers nowadays are more understanding of sudden job loss, only to run into these kind of heartless people when trying to place somebody who has a resume gap. Is it too much to ask for compassion in 2009?