IT employment

GDP Up, But Employment Keeps Dropping

If I understand things correctly a recession is considered to be over when a quarterly GDP report returns to positive terrritory. With a forecast return for this quarter to a positive growth rate, by some metrics that means the recession is over. But that probably explains why About.com includes these paragraphs in its discussion of recessions and depressions:

The standard newspaper definition of a recession is a decline in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for two or more consecutive quarters.

This definition is unpopular with most economists for two main reasons. First, this definition does not take into consideration changes in other variables. For example this definition ignores any changes in the unemployment rate or consumer confidence. Second, by using quarterly data this definition makes it difficult to pinpoint when a recession begins or ends. This means that a recession that lasts ten months or less may go undetected.

By the other metrics tagged in the quote’s second paragraph — namely, unemployment rate and consumer confidence — this recession is most emphaticallyl NOT over. Consumer confidence dipped in September and October, and unemployment rates have continued to climb by fits and starts all year long with decreases for both August and September as well. Many economists and even President Obama continue to predict that unemployment rates will top 10 percent by the end of the year or in the first quarter of next year (of course, with the current rate at 9.8%, that’s no huge jump in rates either).

What does this mean for IT workers? Repeat my mantras from earlier postings on this very same topic. 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.” Given that the employment market is normally quiescent between Thanksgiving and New Years (except for part-time seasonal employment) that definitely means that “hunker down” remains the watchword of the day.

Please join me in wishing for improvement and real growth in IT jobs for 2010.

Looking for work with the Feds? Think “Security Clearance!”

Let me start today’s blog with an upfront disclaimer: though obtaining a security clearance may sound like a good idea to anybody considering some kind of civilian position with the US government, you can’t get one on your own. Obtaining a security clearance requires the active consent and participation of the Feds, and can only be granted for those who work in government agencies or who contract to same (usually through large specialist companies that specialize in providing contract human capital for government use, sometimes called “Beltway bandits”). You can’t go out and get one on your own.

That said, one of the biggest hurdles to obtaining a security clearance is getting through the background check. Here’s where a potential silver lining lurks for military or ex-military personnel: if you’ve ever had a security clearance, your odds of getting one as a civilian go up enormously AND the background check only needs to pick up after the data when your last clearance was granted. This can be a huge boon for those who’ve already been awarded such clearances, even if that occurred some time ago (of course, your criminal and financial record must be blemish-free since then, but that shouldn’t be too big a hurdle for most people).

If you want to learn more about this fascinating subject, please consult one or more of the following articles:

• Security Clearances TAOnline.com (undated)
• Security Clearance Guidelines About.com (undated) (see also Security Clearance Secrets)
• Typical description of legal services in aid of obtaining clearance from The Marbury Law Group, under the heading Security Clearances (many, many legal firms provide such services: this is just an example).
• Security Clearance Jobs Blog (dates vary)
• Security Clearance Manual, Chapters 1 & 10, (undated)
• How long does my security clearance last … ? Yahoo! Answers (April, 2009)
• How can I obtain Government Security Clearance? Linked-in Answers (April, 2009)

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!

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…

Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization

How do you measure unemployment? Well, that depends. In fact, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks no fewer than six such measures, though it reports only on one of them as “the official unemployment rate.” These measures are known as U1 through U6, where U3 corrresponds to official unemployment. Here’s how those measures are defined at the BLS:

• U-1, persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force;
• U-2, job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force;
• U-3, total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (this is the definition used for the official unemployment rate);
• U-4, total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers;
• U-5, total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other marginally attached workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers; and
• U-6, total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers.

As the explanations should verify, these measures increase monotonically as the U-number goes up, so that U1 < U2 < … < U6. For me because U6 is the comprehensive and sweeping measure, it’s also the most interesting and (for me at least) the most likely to indicate how many people consider themselves to be unemployed or underemployed.

If you take a look at the 2008 annual averages you’ll see some pretty sobering numbers by state and territory as well (including the District of Columbia, but not the outlying US territories nor Puerto Rico). Michigan tops the list with a truly scary 15.1% but 26 out of 51 entries come in at 10.1% or higher. No wonder a key priority in restarting our economy has to be putting people back to work: with at least one in 10 who could be in the workforce not all the way into the workforce, that could provide a big infusion of income at the macro level, and make millions of un- and underemployed Americans real wage earners once again.

When Job Fairs Aren’t Completely Fair Affairs

I heard a very interesting news story on NPR this morning about job fairs in the Midwest. As you might expect, attendance at such soirees among employers is down for the time being, while attendance among those seeking work is way up, especially for unemployed people. Check out the story by Adam Hochberg online: it’s entitled “Job Seekers Find Long Lines, Little Payoff At Fairs“

What suprised me was hearing that many companies currently attending job fairs may actually not have any positions open. Here’s the quote that caught me off-guard lifted straight from the tail-end of the aforementioned story:

And some of the firms accepting applications didn’t really have any openings. Rather, they were trying to improve the quality of their work force — by searching for people who might do a better job than the employees they already have.

Wow! Talk about a chilling signal of a buyer’s market for employment. Presumably this means that if some candidate were to present him- or herself at a job fair, and be significantly better qualified than a person currently occupying some particular position, then the current job-holder might be laid off or let go to create a space for that person to fill. The very notion sends chills racing up and down my spine.

I got one of my best-ever corporate jobs at a job fair, working for a company called Excelan as a networking consultant from 1987 to 1989, at which time the outfit was acquired by Novell, for whom I continued to work until 1994. I’m pretty sure that nobody was let go to make room for me during that downturn in the economy (we were coming out of a recession back then), but you never know. Kind of makes me rethink the whole politics of attending such events, but then, those who do attend them usually do so because they feel they must, rather than really wanting to go.

About IT (Un)Employment: It Could Always Be Worse

For a quick take on the US Government’s view of the current employment situation, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary always provides a pretty current view. In reading over the most recent report–for January 2009, dated 2/6/2009–I got a strong sense of where much of the recent doom and gloom in our economic outlook comes from. Baldly over-simplified this report might be summarized as “Jobs are down all over.” Big surprise, right?

Top-line numbers certainly are scary:

• The number of unemployed persons is up to 11.6 million and the unemployment rate is up to 7.6%. This is an increase of 4.1 million unemployed over the last year, and an increase in the rate by 2.7%.
• Long-term unemployed persons count is holding steady at 2.7 million (people who’ve been out of work for 27 weeks or longer), and has gone up by 1.3 million in the last year.
• Unemployment numbers by category are also on the rise: adult men is up to 7.6%, adult women to 6.2%, whites 6.9%, blacks 12.6%, and Hispanics 9.7%; for teenagers that number is unchanged at a whopping 20.8%.

All this said, there is a glimmer of hope in these number for IT professionals. Though many other employment sectors lost significantly more ground in January (retail trade 45,000 jobs; transportation and warehousing 44,000 jobs; financial activities 42,000 jobs) professional and technical jobs were down “only” by 29,000 for the month. We IT geeks may be sucking wind, but at least we’re sucking less wind than some other sectors! On the upside, health care employment is up 19,000 (11,000 less than the average for 2008), and private education is up 33,000.

For another dash of salt on the wounds, nonfarm numbers for November were revised downward from -584,000 to -597,000 for November, 2008, and from -524,000 to -577,000 for December, 2008. All I can say to my fellow IT professionals and colleagues is “Hang in there!”