coping with job loss

Do Temp Job Upswings Lead the Permanent Job Market?

Numerous observers of the employment scene (and the regular monthly US BLS Employment Situation Summary) noticed a potential ray of sunshine in last week’s otherwise gloomy report — namely, an upswing of 34,000 temporary jobs. Some analysts view this kind of activity as a market predictor, which means that when temp job numbers start going up, permanent job numbers generally start to follow this trend (see, for example, the reporting on the Employment Spectator entitled “Temp Jobs up in October“).

Even more encouraging, says the aforementioned source, is that temp job numbers for manufacturing increased. That’s because “increases in manufacturing tend to lead to increases in retail, customer service, and call center jobs as more products hit the marketplace.” But I’m not 100% that this is an unambiguous statistic, because temp jobs are also a fallback for those unemployed who are willing to accept just about any kind of work to keep some money coming in. I’d be interested to know how many of those temp workers lost their original permanent positions in the last 18 months before taking this observation as an unalloyed harbinger of growth and recovery.

That said, you can’t argue that an upswing in manufacturing (which creates goods for sale, and does indeed create the kind of pull-through phenomena in sales, customer service, and call centers to which the Employment Spectator refers in my preceding quote from that source). But with around 15.7 million people unemployed in the US, 34,000 temp jobs doesn’t go very far to help turn things around, either. It will be interesting to see if this represents a genuine trend, and if we’ll see those numbers keep ramping up for a while, or if this turns out to be a glitch (or seasonal hiring for the holiday retail season as might very well be the case).

As Expected, US Unemployment Tops 10% Mark

Today’s the first Friday of the month, and that means that it’s also the day that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its “Employment Situation Summary” for the preceding month (October, in this case). As expected, the official unemployment rate now tops the ten percent mark, at 10.2%. Surprisingly, job losses were heavy in retail (with the Christmas shopping season more or less underway), as well as in manufacturing and construction (but no suprises there). According to NPR, this is the first time joblessness has hit this mark since 1983, and they also report that “it’s the 22nd straight month the U.S. economy has shed jobs, the longest on records dating back 70 years.”

The same NPR story also contains this chilling quote: “Counting those who have settled for part-time jobs or stopped looking for work, the unemployment rate would be 17.5 percent, the highest on records dating from 1994.” The story quite accurately notes that recovery isn’t yet fast enough to get hiring on the move, and invokes “the specter of a jobless recovery” — that is, a period of sufficiently slow economic growth that employers don’t feel confident enough to reverse the current trend to reduce overall headcount, and start hiring new employees instead.

Despite this gloomy employment outlook (which was widely anticipated around the globe) stock markets worldwide staged a rally yesterday, and the US markets are up this morning as I write this blog. Yesterday, the Dow closed above 10,000 again (10,005.96), NASDAQ nearly hit 2,000 (2,195.32), and the S&P 500 was up nearly 2% (1066.63). As you might expect, various stock pickers are predicting that this is a momentary market peak, with another big stretch downward into bull market territory ahead (for example, see Bob Prechter’s interview on Yahoo! Finance yesterday).

If that’s true — and only time will tell — I have to speculate that his makes a gloomy employment market even gloomier. IT professionals would be well-advised to re-read & heed the mantras from my Monday blog, which went as follows:

For those currently employed in IT that goes something like this: “Be cool. Stay put. Hone your skills. Wait for things to improve.” For those who want to work in IT, either on a first job or to get themselves back to work, it sounds like “Be cool. Look harder. Hone your skills (and consider some training or back to school). Wait for things to improve.”

What with the normal seasonal downturn in non-retail hiring between Halloween and New Year’s already underway, and the current downward trend in employment, hunkering down remains the watchword for the foreseeable future.

Po Bronson Strikes Again with “What Should I Do…” Redux

Back in the last downturn — you know, the dot com bomb that followed the dot com boom in 2001 — Po Bronson, one of my favorite writers came out with a terrific book entitled What Should I Do with My Life?  that explored how best to take advantage of the many, often involuntary opportunities to change jobs that the dot bomb bestowed on workers. Given our current economic situation, with a technical end to the recession in sight, but with unemployment at its highest point in 26 years, and with worse still to come, it came as no surprise to me that he’s returned to this subject matter in a story for Fast Company entitled “What Should I Do with My Life, Now?” You’ll definitely want to give this a read, whether you’re out of work, thinking about making changes to your working life, or simply trying to keep up with ever-shifting employment landscape.

The story itself seeks to debunk a list of misconception or perhaps misguided ideas about what it means to ponder one’s fate, and consider one’s working life. You’ll want to turn to Bronson’s own inimitable prose for the biggest impact, but he manages to unearth some ideas and discuss them in a way that’s simultaneously interesting, amusing, realistic, and occasionally pathetic. The notions he seeks to debunk what he perceives as “the top fallacies that I think people project onto this dilemma” (where the dilemma is the title of the story):

1. People are not the architects of their own changes.
2. Responsibilities are not outside your circle of purpose.
3. Following your passion, or pursuing your fantasies, is no ticket to happiness, success, or job satisfaction.
4. No job is perfect, and all of them have yucky parts. But if you feel like you’re working toward something, that’s probably good enough.
5. It’s not necessary to have some kind of higher calling to have a sense of purpose at work.
6. There is no one perfect thing for each person to find and pursue. Any career that provides growth and fulfills a sense of purpose will do.
7. Don’t say you have no idea what you want from life: everybody knows what they want; the difficulty comes in satisfying them. It’s about learning, discovery, and being willing to start over.

All I can say is that I was glad to find and read this story. I hope you’ll do likewise and feel the same when you’re done. Enjoy!

The July 2009 Employment Situation Finally Posts

The markets and their followers have been abuzz with anticipation of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary for July 2009, which just hit the Web and the newswires at 8:30 AM EDT this morning. Although analysts had anticipated a climb in the unemployment rate from 9.4 to as high as 9.7 percent, the lead paragraph includes the following very cheery items, which I expect should buoy those markets substantially today:

• “the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.4 percent”
• “the average monthly job loss for May through July (-331,000) was about half the average decline for November through April (-645,000)”
• “nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in July (-247,000)”

The last item actually appears first in the original source, but I list it last so I can remark that this is the lowest monthly job loss in quite some time. The ongoing trend that things are not as bad as they were before is continuing, though we’re still losing rather than gaining jobs.

Not all the items in this report are necessarily cheery, however. Here are some that might give pause to the inevitable thoughts about recovery, and let us know how far we have to go to regain equilibrium and move beyond into true economic and job growth:

• “the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) rose by 584,000 over the month to 5.0 million”
• “in July, 1 in 3 unemployed persons were jobless for 27 weeks or more”
• Table A-11 indicates that unemployment in the “information” industry stands at 11.5 percent (as compared to 4.1 percent in July 2008), and in the “professional and business services” industry stands at 10.9 percent (as compared to 6.1 percent in July 2008) Table B-4 indicates that average hourly earnings in Information declined by 0.5 percent, and increased in Professional and Business Sevices by 0.2 percent.

What does all this mean? With a total of 15 million Americans still unemployed, things remain tough all over, particularly in IT, where things are somewhat worse than they are overall. It’s still time to sit tight, stay put, and keep an eye out for trouble heading your way. Hopefully all the talk about and longing for recovery will translate into tangible signs of same soon.

Who’s Laying Off Right Now?

To try to get a sense of who’s still letting people go in IT, I turned to the Employment Spectator’s IT news items and to an old favorite, the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker. Although as I heard it said on NPR yesterday things aren’t getting as bad right now as quickly as they had been, we’re not exactly on easy street just yet. Keep that in mind as you look at these May 2009 layoff listings.

Admittedly, this is not as dire as Q4 of 2008, or even Q1 of this year, but it’s not yet cause for dancing in the streets. With some big, well-known names in the list–especially HP. Autodesk, CA, and Perot Systems–it’s clear that some savvy corporate forecasters are still prognosticating rough waters ahead. In the meantime, please stay buckled up!

The Slide Is Slowing, But Which Way Is Up?

Recent jobless claims continue to flatten out, but at 8.9% overall, unemployment is still on the high side for the US from a historical perspective (the last time we experienced such rates was in the 1980s, in fact). This creates an interesting situation, in which everybody — including me — is looking for signs of hope wherever they might be found. Recent activity on the stockmarket still shows some vacillation in a sometimes-up, sometimes-down pattern, so financial markets are still uncertain as well.

What does all this mean for IT employment? Conventional wisdom is that those who have jobs should be glad, and do what they can to keep them, and that those looking for work need to turn over as many rocks as possible to find something or anything while the unemployment situation remains so tough. On the other hand, lots of more aggressive technologists and economists believe that technology employment is a bellwether that usually pushes to the front of the group of employment sectors that lead the economy out of a slump (or deep recession, in our current case).

The problem is that while numbers aren’t sliding down as fast as they were in the last quarter of 2008, nor the first quarter of this year, they’re neither on the way up for overall employment, nor particularly upward-inclined for IT in particular. If IT is to lead the economy, the destination isn’t yet clear: as far as I (or anybody else can tell), we’re still meandering around with no easy way to connect the dots along our recent path, nor a definite trend yet in sight.

All I can conclude is that it’s still time to hunker down, and tread the conservative path. As I indicated earlier in this blog, that means if you’ve got a job right now (or work if you’re a freelancer like me) be grateful. If you’re looking for work, alas, this means it’s time to look harder and perhaps even to consider a move to those few markets where employment opportunities are relatively more abundant. Ouch!

Some Faint Glimmers of Hope?

Just over a month ago (March 23), I wrote a blog entitled “It’s COLD out there/here.” Therein I reported on my own attempts to find full-time, permanent employment by saying that responses were few and far between — a scant handful from over two dozen direct and online applications — and of such few as did present themselves for consideration, most offers were way below what I would be willing to consider, let alone accept. Seemed like a perfect opportunity to toss around some doom and gloom, so that’s just what I did.

In the past month, some interesting things have started happening:

1. I’ve been contacted by several recruiters and hiring managers, all from or representing reputable mid-sized to large companies. Nobody’s tried to low-ball me on salaries or rates, either, much to my extreme surprise.
2. My volume of freelance work is starting to pick up appreciably all of a sudden. In the past 30 days, I’ve kicked off nearly half-a-dozen new projects, and have brought four significant new customers online. The pace of work from existing customers is picking up dramatically, too, and I’ve had several calls recently from editors with whom I’d stopped working for a while to let me know that new work is (or could be) in the pipeline.
3. There’s enough going on, in fact, that I’ve re-hired one of my former co-workers and associates to act as a full-time project manager to help me keep things flowing and under control. I’ve learned the hard way that without somebody to keep an eye on deadlines, deliverables, and quality, when the pace of work gets really frenetic far too much can go by the wayside, if not left entirely behind in the rush and crush.

Coupled with a recent uptick in global markets, improved consumer confidence levels, and the onset of the influx of government stimulus spending, I’m strongly tempted to observe that things show some signs of improvement. I still think it’s too early to talk about a turnaround or upward trends in employment, markets, and business, but it’s very nice to see some positive indicators popping up in my immediate neighborhood.

I can only hope my friends and colleagues in IT are seeing similar signs in their professional neighborhoods and situations as well. If so, please share those observations by commenting on this blog post; if not, share your impressions and observations to the contrary instead. At this tentative stage of the game, I’m all ears, in full-blown “listening mode” if not outright “hoping for the best mode!” If you have some light to shed on these topics, please beam some my way…

Layoffs Hit Close to Home

Given that I live in Round Rock, TX, just 6.37 miles from Dell Computer galactic headquarters at 1 Dell Way 78682, I hope it comes as no surprise that many of my neighbors work for that company. In fact, of the 21 houses in my immediate block, at least 9 of those households number (or numbered until recently) one or more Dell employees among its members.

Because my Dad came to visit for the weekend, and my Mom (who’s now a resident in an assisted care facility) asked for a photo of my wife, my son, myself, and the old man by phone yesterday afternoon, I had to get some outside help to take that photo to meet her request. As I stepped outside into the front yard, I ran into my next door neighbor–let’s call him Tom–and asked for his help in making the shot. He not only obliged, but also told me in passing while we were waiting for the other folks to assemble that he’d been laid off at Dell last Thursday (April 16). To the best of my knowledge, he’s the closest co-resident around here to get the axe at Dell. His job had been to orchestrate factory floor and order logistics to make sure that large orders were properly scheduled, parts ordered for timely delivery, and that builds met both specification and quality requirements before being shipped to their (volume) buyers.

When I asked him what he planned to do, he said: “I’m going to take a couple of weeks off, then I’ll start looking for another job” (fortunately, his wife remains gainfully employed so I guess it’s not an immediate crisis). When I asked him what kind of severance package he got he told me it was “about four months pay, plus two months COBRA and two months of outplacement assistance.” From those remarks, and knowing as many current and former Dell employees as I do, I’m guessing further that he had between 5 and 10 years with the company.

When I asked him how he felt about it, he provided an interesting and illuminating response: “I’d been thinking about leaving for some time anyway, and hadn’t been completely happy there, so I guess this will be for the good in the long run.” To me, this shows a healthy response to a difficult and painful situation: first, he recognizes that he had issues with his previous situation and was already thinking about making changes on his own, and second, he’s looking more forward toward what lies ahead, rather than brooding or worrying about what has already happened and probably can’t be undone.

I also have to applaud his decision to take some time to relax and regain his bearings before jumping right into the job hunt. This will probably give him a chance to regain his equilibrium and muster some enthusiasm for the research, interviews, and personal networking activities that await him. While I certainly wouldn’t wish anybody else into Tom’s shoes, I must commend him for a healthy and well-considered reaction to his situation. I’d recommend a similar approach — and outlook — to anybody else who does find him- or herself in those same shoes, particularly if a severance package or pay in lieu of notice makes taking a break both possible and affordable.

Got your own layoff story to tell? Share it with me through the contact form on my Web page at www.edtittel.com, and I may just share it with the readers of this blog. And just as my sympathies and best wishes go out to Tom, so also do they go out to all of us IT professionals who have to surmount this bump in the road of gainful employment.

Check Out/Help Out with the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker

Thanks to Don Sears excellent “Careers blog” at eWeek, I learned about the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker earlier this week. Here, I’d like to explain and describe it, then depict its reporting, and talk about how its numbers compare to those from other sources (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Manpower, Inc., and various other employment reporting resources). Finally, I’ll explain how you can help to make this tool better and more accurate, by reporting things you may know that it doesn’t yet reflect.

Basically, the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker is a database that places all company announcements and other verifiable information about high-tech layoffs on a timeline. It starts as of August 27, 2008, and goes right up to the present. Here’s a quick look at its layoff graph, which clearly depicts a spike in layoff in Q1′09 as compared to Q4′08:

Snapshot of dynamic tracking graph/timeline (visit home page for current view)

What this graph represents is a visual summary of the layoff data also available on this Web page. As you scroll down, you’ll see a table that lists all layoffs by company, date, locations, number of laid-off employees, percentage of total workforce, with a link to the source for this information. As I write this blog, there are 455 entries in this table, a smattering of which looks like this:

Data table of layoff info that drives the graphical display

This is a great resource and a very interesting source of information, but it is vital to understand that it differs from normal employment reporting in one important way. Scroll down to the Microsoft entry for January 22, 2009, and I’ll explain what I mean. Note that this item indicates a layoff of 5,000 people. And indeed, that reflects Microsoft’s stated intentions for 2009 where layoffs are concerned. But on 1/22/2009, Microsoft actually laid off only 1,400 people, while announcing their plans to lay off an additional 3,600 over the course of 2009. Other employment reports (like the sources mentioned earlier in this blog) usually get their numbers from state and federal employment tracking agencies, or by using numbers for layoffs undertaken during a specific time period, or on a certain date.

I’m not trying to suggest that the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker is inaccurate or invalid; I’m only pointing out the limits to its reporting and the way it positions numbers in time. It’s a very useful tool, and a great source of information.

All this said, what can you to do help this tool be more accurate? If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you’ll find a comment form where you can provide information about layoffs that their list may currently omit (perhaps yours or that from somebody else you know who works in high tech). You must, however, include a link to some published source for this information, even if it’s only a company press release that mentions the layoff, the date, and the number of employees affected. Do your part! Help make this tool even better…post your information right away!

BLS Posts March 2009 Employment Situation Summary

The March 2009 numbers just came out this morning from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and are probably best summed up as “more of the same, only worse.” Overall US unemployment jumped from 8.1% in February, up to 8.5% in March (a nearly 4.7% increase). And to make things still grimmer, here’s an interesting clip from the report’s first paragraph “Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.1 million jobs have been lost, with almost two-thirds (3.3) million of the decrease occurring in the last 5 months. In March, job losses were large and widespread across the major industry sectors.” In fact, the official job losses in March were tallied at 663,000, which is almost exactly one-fifth of that 3.3M number.

What about IT? Professional and Business services as a category declined by 133,000 (preliminary estimate) in March, and this is where IT is primarily reported. That’s about 1 in 5 of the jobs lost in March! Drilling down into Report B2, average weekly hours in the Information category for production and nonsupervisory workers declined by only 6 minutes (from 36.9 to 36.8 hours) so perhaps the direct impact on IT is not as dire as the complete Professional and Business services number suggests.

On the other hand, Report A-11, “Unemployed persons by industry and class of worker, not seasonally adjusted” shows that from March 2008 to March 2009 unemployment rates spiked from 4.8% a year ago, to 7.8% this year. That’s a whopping 38.5% jump for the category, so there’s obviously plenty of pain and suffering to go around in our sector, though it’s either on par or less than similar spikes in other sectors. As you’d expect construction(21.1%) and manufacturing (12.2%) are among the hardest hit, along with mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction (12.6%), Professional and business services (11.4%),  Leisure and hospitality (11.6%), and Agriculture etc (19%).

I’m hoping this latest round of news doesn’t dampen the modest stock market rally that’s buoyed sentiments and outlooks over the past couple of weeks. But gosh, doesn’t this just confirm what we’re all hearing on the street, or experiencing first hand? All I can say is “Hang in there!”