IT employment outlook

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!

Manpower Cuts IT Numbers for Q2′09

By contrast with the recently published numbers from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Manpower, Inc. Employment Outlook Survey for the US (published 3/10/2009) is less bullish on IT. The Q2 2009 forecast for the information sector looks like this for the second quarter of 2009, out of 38,000-plus employers contacted:

• 11 percent believe IT employment will go up
• 16 percent believe IT employment will go down
• 69 percent believe IT employment will continue unchanged

That reflects ongoing uncertainty about customer demand (going up? going down? going sideways? who knows?) and makes companies reluctant to change staffing levels. That said, Manpower Inc also forecasts a drop of 5% in total IT employees classed in their “information” sector for Q2′09, though their professional and business services category (where some IT positions will be classified) forecasts growth of 9 percent for the same quarter.

Where is this market going? I’m not sure that anybody really knows, but the numbers coming back from the Manpower survey clearly indicate that employers don’t yet have any feel as to whether the trend is up or down. Outside IT you’ll hear the same story, where the vast majority of responses also fall in the “No Change” category.

In fact, the lowest value for No Change is 58% in Construction and the highest is 76% for Other Services. By contract, those who think things are increasing/on the way up vary from 11% (Education and Health Services, Government, Information, and Other Services) to a high of 25% for Leisure and Hospitality. On the downside, the lowest number is 11% (Education and Health Services, Leisure & Hospitality, and Professional and Business Services) with a high of 22% in Mining.

My conclusion: IT is still going sideways along with the rest of the economy as business, government, industry, and consumers all wait to see if we’ve hit bottom yet, or if another trough opens up in front of us. Stay tuned, and wear your waders plus an extra pair of socks! It’s safe to conclude there’s no IT boom in sight.

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!”