This morning’s news about the latest unemployment statistics was dismal and quite sobering. The U.S. has lost 5 million jobs in the past 16 months, and the unemployment rate has hit a 25 year high, reaching 8.5%. Our own TechCrunch layoff tracker reports nearly 320,000 tech jobs lost since August. While jobs are being shed at an unprecedented rate, job listings are also being affected, both in tech and general employment sectors.
Tech jobs site Dice.com is reporting a 45% year over year drop in available technology jobs for March, continuing the drought of tech jobs in the economic downturn. This drop, as reported by Thomas Weisel Partners, is the highest annual drop Dice has seen so far this year, with February’s listings down 40.4% and January’s jobs down 39.3% (all year over year). In 1Q09, available tech jobs declined 41.4% year over year on Dice.com. Monster.com reports a 27% decline for Q12009 from last year, indicating that perhaps tech jobs are being hit harder than general job listings. And it seems that jobs hit an all time low in 1Q09, job listings declined 22% in 4Q09.
Dice said that of the ten reported metropolitan areas, Silicon Valley was hit worst, with available tech jobs down 57.7% year over year. Chicago (down 55.3% y/y) and Boston (down 55.3% y/y) also posted large declines. The Conference Board’s Online Help-wanted Index suggests that monthly job demand dropped 100K in March, down 31% year over year.
Our own job site, CrunchBoard, has also seen a sharp decline in available tech jobs over the past three months. A little over year ago 100 – 120 job listings were added to CrunchBoard each month. The number of new listings gradually declined with the onset of the recession and then fell significantly in November 2008, dropping from 68 to 37 listings from the month before. The listings rose slightly over the next few months, with February’s listings hovering around 60. Even though CrunchBoard’s listings don’t meet the magnitude of Dice’s or Monster’s listings database, this decline in available tech jobs is alarming.
It’s still not clear if the worst is over when it comes to layoffs and available jobs. Tech companies are continuing to shed jobs and even those companies which appeared to be immune to massive layoffs a few months ago, like Google, have succumbed to letting people go in the wake of the recession. There’s no doubt that the tech industry has been hit hard across the board. But the tech sector survived through the burst of the bubble a while back, and has proven to be resilient even in the most challenging of times.
Does dice base that off people not posting jobs on their site?
I was thinking the same thing.
80+ workers were dumped at the parent company where I work as a programmer, and at 3+ people were let go in our team. A lot of people including me took massive pay cuts to keep benefits.
Do executives ever think to themselves:
“how will 40 people do the same work as 80 did before?”
See, that’s critical thinking. I dunno if most executives practice it.
The bottom line is that your favorite websites, TV shows, products ect…. will lose not only new features, but the level of quality assurance that made them more usable in the past.
Thanks for not spending.
It’s spending that got us into this mess, idiot.
GW Bush got us into this mess. There was far more careless spending in the Clinton days and we did just fine.
Thanks to Bush foreigners are buying elsewhere. People are accepting inferior products and the standard was lowered world wide.
A mess is only a mess if people notice it. By stopping everything and pointing it out, the gears have ground to a halt.
It’s the housing market that got us in this mess, not spending. Everything else snowballed following the housing market crash. Like toppling the first domino.
Bottom line, everyone’s shedding any excessive baggage in fear of bankruptcy – “batting down the hatches”. This freeze in hiring is causing a slowdown in spending, which is SPEEDING UP the recession.
Get your facts straight before calling people an idiot, idiot.
You are both ridiculous in your economical understanding. It’s not related to spending or Bush, it’s related to reselling risky things (such as huge amounts of loans for people that have minimal chance of paying them back) as very safe things thus creating inexistent value that others than take for granted and so on and so on…
Lol. What John said above is spot on (I was simultaneously saying the same thing)
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True, the problem by both @Lol and @John are correct as the start of this mess.
The problem we’re seeing now, is a “me too” approach that most executives (and boards) have.
This year, the standard business response to a downturn is: “Cut Early, Cut Deep”.
It’s a statement that’s been mentioned on this blog several times last year.
The problem now, is everyone took that same advice… which is good advice, unless everyone else is doing it.
Now, it’s just causing more problems, a prolonged downturn, and even higher unemployment / under employment problems.
My company is a good example. We were profitable at the end of 2008… hell, we were profitable on the Q1 Projections. The problem our investors felt, was “not profitable enough”. So, they cut over 50% of the staff.
They unfortunately don’t recognize that the huge margins of the last two years were an anamoly and not the status quo profit wise.
I agree changes had to be made, but when you risk the future of your business for the current situation, it’s not good management.
The truth of the matter is Execs never know what they’re doing. That’s why they need to hire talent for the company the CEO otherwise would not have in order to run the business. Just imagine understanding Marketing, Sales, Development, Programming, Business Development, Project Management, Procurement, Human Resources, Accounting, etc. If you know at least the jist of how to manage all of that, you are a rare and unique individual who deserves some serious kudos. However, not even most of all talented people can do that. Just being objective here.
Laid-off programmers should focus their efforts on retraining for other fields.
Humor us, what is a Java, PHP or C++ programmer going to do? Construction?
iPhone development is hot right now on craigslist job postings. That’s about the best chance of learning something that may help them get a new job. Honestly.
Are you saying a programmer can’t learn something new that is different than what s/he knows?
20,000 ipone apps collecting dust. dont count on opportunity there unless you have a truly unique and innovative strategic niche product offering. Still waiting for someone from TC to officially state that the tech bubble has burst and will never be the same again. innovation kills cats.
MyLocator.me – locate yourself
Chris,
For starters many programmers should expand their mental horizons and question any Ayan Rand they’ve read, and why in heck they’ve read it in the first place.
This may be difficult, so a good exercise to consider is to, by default, never vote for a white man for the presidency ever again.
Crude, yes, but probability wise it’s the safer bet.
Question my young Jedi: Why is it the safer bet?
ie, “Would you like whip cream on your mocha?”
Lol….
Laid off workers should focus on organizing and making companies afraid to hire H1-B types and sending jobs to whatever 3rd world craphole is the flavor of the day.
The downturn in dice.com jobs might not be as bad as first glance: typically jobs on there are posted by 4 different contracting firms.
That wouldn’t matter, if the ratio of 4x overposting stayed the same.
This is a tad unsettling.
I’m launching my own job-searching website, because 1) I can’t find a job. 2) all the existing job searching websites give too much advantage to employers and recruiters.
As BlogReader points out, many recruiters repeatedly post fake job ads. Why? Because they want to collect job seekers information, so when a real job comes, they can find the candidate in a short time. They really don’t care if they waste your time.
Many employers also post fake job ads on local job boards, so it looks like they are expending, thereby attracting investment.
Even worse, some company’s HR ask candidates to design a website for the company as a “test”. Of course, the candidate won’t get anything after spending two days designing a website to impress the HR.
In all honesty, it seems to me that the job websites really over charge, not really giving much to the fact that a lot of tech start ups are trying to slow their burn rate.
Also, there are just so many of them, that to go and pay 200-450 for one job posting for a month starts climbing up there.
We are hiring! http://www.younoodle.com- and won’t even ask for a test website
That’s a pretty good looking job site you got there. I wish you all the best. BTW if it ever gets very popular, please don’t charge us 695$ to post a job offer…
cheers
Does put a lot of talent on the sideline to be picked up by those of us still looking for it.
For development-centric jobs, check out DevCareerSource (http://devcareersource.com)
It was created for Developers by Developers.
For development-centric jobs, check out DevCareerSource (http://devcareersource.com)
It was created for Developers by Developers.
We haven’t solved the recruiter problem yet, but we will.
Medicine will always be a safe have and cosmetic medicine even safer. Vanity is as constant as the Northern Star.
Sad, but true.
As someone who has been recruiting in Silicon Valley for years now there are a few points I feel I have to make here:
- The number of available jobs in Silicon Valley at the moment is drastically lower than it has been for a long time.
- Because most startup organizations within the Bay Area are not profitable, most local startups are being extremely conservative with cash and only hiring when it’s absolutely essential.
- Larger, public organizations are also freezing or slowing hiring as they attempt to curb spending in any way possible in order to ride out the current economic situation.
- There are, however, several smaller organizations that are finding great success in this market that are hiring aggressively as they attempt to outpace their competition through the downturn.
- If you are a job seeker in this market…NONE OF THIS MATTERS TO YOU.
I know it seems very scary out there. Certainly there are enough negative news stories on a daily basis that it’s very easy to believe that the sky is falling, but the truth is that there are still a lot of jobs available and people are finding new work every day. The only difference is that for a long time the hiring market in the Valley was so robust, and our industry so over-infused with cash, that this feels like famine by comparison.
No, you can’t just post your resume on a job board at 8am and get twenty job opportunities in your inbox by noon anymore, but it’s a job search— it’s supposed to be hard
I guess my main point here is: keep your head up. We’re in a rough patch but don’t expect Silicon Valley to turn into a dust bowl anytime soon. If you’re out there looking for work (PLUG ALERT) you can certainly check out our active searches at http://www.gravitypeople.com or follow us on twitter at http://www.twit...m/gravitypeople
And good luck out there!
i wonder how many ppl are getting paid cuts
The Gold rush is on for wannabe entrepreneurs, who are buying up any available marketable domain names and quickly putting them to use while getting their feet wet in the Blogger’s sphere. Most new Blogger’s do not know how to get their own Wordpress blogs loaded up onto servers, let alone designed. So webmasters, blog designers, as well as hosting and domain name companies are making a pretty penny out of this current severe (D)recession. If the current international economy crises continues it’s steady downward spiral, the internet is going to be turned into the Bloggernet full of MLM get rich schemes(scams) Thus, any minute valued domain names still available are going to be snapped up, if they have not already. DomainMaximus
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 model.
zTalent was just launched and needs people to add more tests and test questions. Did I mention it was free?
i thought it’s so bad that no one’s hiring.
i guess 55% of the jobs before the recession are still available. that’s another way to look at it.
45% drop, but I bet all H1-B visas are still filled by Indian nationals.
LOL, that’s actually true. Just look at Dell’s Tech Support Team.
the actual jobs loss rate is probably lower, but it’s making recruiters downsize, thus lowering the amount of postings.
i mean, come on. nearly every posting on dice is fake and put up by a recruiter fishing for resumes.
I’m a fan of StartUpHire. It’s predominately tech jobs and they’re all at VC backed startups.
http://www.startuphire.com
Are 1Q09 and Q12009 the same thing? Please hire a proofreader.
We all want to say that it’s GW Bush, it’s the housing market, it’s the stock market, it’s lack of retention, it’s my hair…lol. The truth is the infrastructure of our global economy is facing a collapsing stage. So, instead of getting into the blame game and pointing fingers like toddlers fighting over ice cream, think about how you can become self employed and more importantly..how your occupation can actually help others; not just yourself. I hope this solves it.
A lot of companies have moved to advertising on Craigslist instead of job boards. Last time I talked to Dice they wanted $850/Month to post 5 Job ads.
I have few friends who have found jobs through CL.
Dice.com was primarily a job site for contracting work (1099 type of work) and that type of work.
When Dice raised its rates so dramatically for renewals and drove their mainstay clients (recruiters and consulting firms) to other sites, they corrupted their own polling.
As for the job market, jobs are a lagging indicator. When the economy picks up, jobs will follow 6 to 9 months later for full time jobs and sooner for consultants.
Nice post! Check out my site too at http://macmaniapodcast.com.
Nice post, thanks for share!
Assume that 100 job listings exist on Dice when everything was normal. As mentioned above, let’s say 50 of them was fake or doubled job ads. 1:2 ratio is fine. Let’s go on being optimistic; When the recession hit, say 15% drop on new real openings. That also means 15% drop on overall. Suppose cutting agency expenses and moving ads to craigslist caused 50% drop on fake job ads on Dice. The result is 43 real job ads, 22 fake ads which means 35% drop on overall. When you toy with ratios, it’s very easy to achieve Dice’s numbers.
Just playing with numbers and guessing. Don’t take it serious.
I know there are many parameters I didn’t count in.
My company is hiring — in India. They haven’t replaced any of us yet, but they’ve told us that they will replace those who leave via “natural attrition” with workers in India. It’s tough competing with someone who makes one-third of what you do. Glad I don’t own a home with an oppressive mortgage or have a family to support. Prepare to accept a lower standard of living
If you have a security clearance and appropriate qualifications, there are plenty of technical jobs available all over the country.
Visit the websites of Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Harris, L3, etc.
Dice is now primarily a platform for H-1B and L-1 scams and Desi bodyshops. I paid for the “Advantage” plan and got to see who was viewing my resume. It was mostly Desi bodyshops.
These outfits take the solid resumes of American developers like myself, and paste an H-1B or L-1 candidate’s name on top, usually a guy from India living out of a suitcase.
The Indian recruiters need to demonstrate that they can’t find local talent, so they need a stack of resumes from Americans that they can reject so that they can be legally compliant with the law.
The bodyshops also create fantasy requirements that no person can ever fill. I had a Desi firm pitch me a gig requiring 10 years of .Net/10 years of Java/10 years of Oracle/10 years of SQL-Server, supposedly at Dell in Austin.
These are phony jobs, and suddenly a kid from Mumbai can show up with, oddly enough, THE EXACT SKILLS for the req. He gets a cursory phone interview by another Desi inside the company, and the next day can be legally working in the U.S. The kid will net about $23/hr, the rest of the bill rate going to the bodyshops, sometimes 2 or 3 of them.
I was just on Dice.com and noticed that at least in my area Denver/Boulder, CO it seemed as if Dice was simply overrun with recruiting firms, etc. with no actual companies posting jobs. I can see why no one would actually use Dice anymore, no wonder the job postings are down so much – it’s practically worthless.
PS – in all honesty, it’s about time for a revolution.
“Do what you must”
….Gawd stop complaining and do something about it