IT employment trends

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).

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.

Good news/bad news on unemployment

Yesterday’s unemployment figures from the BLS and the most recent unemployment claims numbers tell a “good news/bad news” story about the job market. Actually it’s really more of a “bad news/good news” tale, because the bad news is that unemployment has hit a 26-year high of 8.9 percent (the last time we visited this spot on the charts was in 1983), while the good news is only that job loss claims have dropped from numbers in the 600,000-plus range to 539,000 for April. Because analysts had been expecting numbers as high as 620,000 for April, this is an interesting and possibly significant downward swing. Apparently, the US Government played a role in this dip: the hriing of temps to work for the US Census for 2010 was a factor in this downturn. For all the details check out the latest “Employment Situation Summary” from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As usual Table B-1: Employment on nonfarm payrolls by industry sector and selected industry detail sheds a little more light on recent trends in IT. The information category shows jobs down in April by a modest 17,000, with only a minimal loss of 800 jobs in the “Other information services” sub-category under that heading. Professional and business services also show relatively modest job losses in the areas most likely connected with IT, including a modest uptick of 1,600 jobs in the “Management and technical consulting services” sub-category.

It’s tempting to find cause for optimism in even the slightest reversal of free-fall in employment and economic numbers. But as Scott Simon said on NPR this morning (I’m paraphrasing): “We can’t really say things are improving, just that they’re not getting worse as quickly as they were before.” If we can take some cheer from a situation that’s stopped deteriorating as quickly as it has been, I think I’ll wait to break out the champagne and canapes for when the numbers actually start to appear on the positive side of the ledger in more than one or two small sub-categories. But even then, I find myself wondering if we’re not finally on the way back up?

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…