After months of dismal unemployment numbers, this morning’s continued growth in the unemployment rate from 9.4% in May to 9.5% for the month of June reinforces the fact that the U.S. is still very much in the midst of recession. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor reported today that employers cut 467,000 jobs in June, compared to 322,000 jobs in May. Unfortunately, the tech industry is still feeling the heat of the recession, with the rate of available jobs not improving much from the past few months, according to technology jobs site Dice.com.
Tom Silver, senior vice president of Dice.com, told us this morning that Dice.com is reporting a 44% year-over-year drop in job listings for the month of June. May’s year-over-year decline hovered around 45%. And Silver also points to a rise in the Department of Labor’s unemployment rate for the “Computer and Mathematics sector,” (the area best associated with the tech sector). June’s unemployment rate for the tech sector almost tripled year-over year, from 1.9% in June of 2008, to 5.4% in June of 2009. While Silver says that the tech job market is certainly better than during the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, the number of job opportunities have remained stagnant over the course of the past few months.
According to the TechCrunch layoff tracker, layoffs in the tech sector may be slowing down, which we reported in May. Layoffs are still taking place—the tracker has increased by 10,000 lost jobs over the past two months to a total of 340,000 individual layoffs. But there is a marked difference in the pace of layoffs from late 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, when layoffs were increasing by 100,000 every few weeks For instance, it only took three weeks for cumulative tech layoffs to go from 200,000 to 300,000 in February and five weeks for layoffs to go from 100,000 to the 200,000 mark before that in January.
Though companies are cutting back and limiting hiring for the near future, Silver says that there are still certain jobs within the tech sector that are in demand. Developers who are skilled in the areas of virtualization and IT security are among those in high-demand. And Silver maintains that tech companies are always in need of talented and skilled programmers. But for all the marketing and business development folks out there, demand usually picks up in line with the economy.
You can check out CrunchBoard for tech job listings.
Photo Credit: Flickr/Lisa Brewster
Has anyone actually been hired via Dice?
Serious question.
problem with Dice is that it’s not direct hires (full time or contract) but 99.9% recuiters who want to add $20-50 /hour on top the developers (who are doing the real work) hourly rate or a big finder’s fee. Often you’ll see the same projects posted by 5-6 diff recruiters, often w/ wildly diverging rates.
There is no one stop place for companies to post direct project work – mix of KIT, Craigslist and whatever (do not count guru, elance as they are mostly overrun by offshoring outfits). Shame. Dice should be that place and they should stop courting recruiters so heavily and instead focus on direct hiring managers.
I was reading this earlier today regarding HotJobs which I pretty much lump into the Dice category as well:
“That job posting was paid for when that employer renewed their contract with the major job board. That might have taken place a year ago, a month ago or anywhere in between.”
source: http://blog.job...uilder-hotjobs/
By contrast, I’ve actually -hired- people ad hoc using Linkedin Jobs but recently noticed that with Linkedin Groups there is a Jobs tab there now and it’s a dumping grounds. It’s not the same refined method as Linkedin Jobs but it does get word out there. If that helps clean up Linkedin Q&A I’m all for it.
So, maybe the retainer oriented job boards are really the ones suffering and the more nimble niche ad hoc variety are flourishing?
Agree that Dice and Hotjobs are no longer effective recruiting avenues, at least here in Silicon Valley. I tried Dice about 3 months ago for a developer position and it was pathetic – way too South Bay centric and I don’t think young, talented developers even know about Dice.
I have been recruiting for various product development jobs over the last year and here is my take on effectiveness of the various methods:
Product Managers, Project Managers, Marketing and Biz Dev : LinkedIn is most effective. These folks network like hell and you can find for reasonable job posting fees.
Java Developers, QA, Designers and almost any contract positions: Craigslist is as good as anything else but you will have to sift through a lot of crap to find a few gems.
Ruby On Rails Developers and top notch eningeering talent that are hard to find: Specialty boards like CrunchBoard and LinkedIn are worth a try, but if you want access to passive (i.e. already employed and not looking) candidates, contingent recruiting is still the way to go to find the best talent.
Executives: Again, try LinkedIn first if you have time but in my experience you must use retained searches to find the top quality folks. Expensive as hell, but the execs are the ones who are going to be hiring the rest of the team so no reason to save money and make a bad hire that can sink your company.
Of course, work your internal network and use employee referrals as well, but that is my take on the current state of things having hired about 20 folks in the last 2 years with at least 10 or so more to go.
Being a well funded startup with a business model helps, of course.
@MicroFace Great ideas..
“Young and talented”. No age discrimination in your hiring practices MicroFace. I’m guessing you are under 40 yourself.
Intelligence is inherent. Accumulation of knowledge takes time.
Speaking of unemployment, the FuckedCompany BBS is back at http://www.f2bbs.com
…And 75% of people agree, Dice sucks.
Serious question about Dice, people always say it’s a lot of recruiters, that’s it.
Is there a problem with working with recruiters, or is it just not as ideal?
I’m a new tech grad, so any advice would be great.
Thanks!
I am not a programmer, and their opinions may vary. Recruiters probably have a big part in getting contracts for programmers. Others can detail the advantages of recruiters…
I was at a brick-and-mortar recruiter a few years back. Also there was a systems support guy who was extremely experienced. He said, “I have never gotten a job from these recruiters.” This is over many years. This story tells one particular tale – recruiters can be the worst place to go. Also, by the time one gets to a recruiter, it may mean they have already tried everything else.
Noob, it is as simple as this: Establish yourself as a “goto” person. Our lead programmer can sit down at any system where code is running, figure out how it works, and repair or modify it. The communications protocols, the programming code, it can be something he has never seen before. When you can apply your schooling and experience to any problem that comes your way, you will be able to get a job anywhere. You will just need to place a few calls first.
I’ve been listening to these layoff numbers and they are horrible but what I was wondering is…
Is anyone getting new jobs?
So my question is really if there are 340k people laid off but 40k hired is it 300k or is that already figured in?
At this point, just hearing 500 people got new jobs in the US would be a boost to me even if it was reported along with the unemployment numbers.
Its going to get a whole lot worse come this fall. Christmas will be a disaster.
I guess we all are missing a major point here.
When people are laid off from a company…who are those who are going to be laid off first? the most inefficient ones right? (the bottom 5-10%) and in high tech industries skill and efficiency is a big question… we are not physical labors. So the 300,000 currently laid off is the most inefficient ones logically and this is the hard truth. Maybe because of hard time to save the citizens some dumb guys are still employed but in capitalist society this will not make sense in the long run.
All engineers & techies are not employable.. there are differences in caliber amongst techies and the technology industry always looks for the brightest to bring there products early and in with top notch features.
So I guess there are still jobs as the job boards are not empty you see but not a good time for a fresher…
I have have worked for the worlds largest and smallest tech companies. This is not correct. Many times layoffs are affected by:
1. employee cost (salary+benefits)
2. proximity to upper management
3. project viability (are you working on something that makes money)
4. Age – (you may be productive now but how about 5yrs)
5. and last but not least, who you know.
Yes, in a perfect world with a complete meritocracy, the least efficient employees would be laid off.
I guess，Fortunately, the employment rate is not the issue.
what’s for 75% of people agree…!!
I have been using this website to find jobs.
http://www.jobmatchlive.com
I have been using this website to find jobs from both Dice and Career Builder.
http://www.jobmatchlive.com
Yeah, sure you have mr jobmatch…
@ trucking jobs .. Very Nice!
Totally bummed that there wasn’t a report button for the comments by that job match guy. Obvious spammer-
Obviously doesn’t get good karma for that one-