Given the recent downturn on global stock markets (three or more trading days in the last month have witnessed point drops in excess of 300 for the Dow Jones Industrials, and other indexes have seen multiple drops of three percentage points or greater on multiple days in this period as well) and a lackluster job growth situation, optimism about growth and recovery appear to be on the wane right now. I’m not convinced it’s once again time for total doom and gloom, but certainly a bit of caution and conservatism is called for, both for IT employers and those on the hunt for IT jobs.

And in fact, the information sector for May was dead flat with neither growth nor losses to report for that period. Here’s the snippet from Table B-1 that tells the information sector story:

Table B-1 Headings

May Information numbers

While things are going nowhere, that’s still not as scary as going down, down, down. Personally, I’m hoping to see another up month soon, and after that, a few such months in sequence wouldn’t go down badly, either.

Just for grins, I surfed over to my local public radio station (KUT Austin) and checked out their “Get Involved” section, where numerous volunteer organizations get the word out that they’re looking for volunteer help of all kinds — this morning, in fact, there were 61 such organizations listed, all of whom can probably use some help with computer-related tasks and activities, and some of whom focus directly on such matters (Goodwill Green Works, Austin Partners in Education, Military Children Education Coalition, Community Tax Centers, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, and more).

By reaching out to others, and giving of yourself, you not only do some good for those you seek out by volunteering. You may also do yourself some good by gaining additional experience and by making contacts that may in fact lead to a real job someday–hopefully, sooner rather than later. If your local area has a public radio station, you can use it to find volunteer opportunities easily; if not, use your favorite search engine to see what kinds of volunteer organizations are looking for help where you live.

I take some heart from both sets of numbers. The first indicates that employers are seeing fewer reasons to trim staff than they have for quite some time. The second says that the number of jobs lost (both planned and unplanned) continues to wane. Together, these statistics tell us that things continue to improve somewhat, though we’re by no means out of losing territory (job losses and layoffs do continue, albeit at a slower pace) and onto winning ground (where, ideally not only the general jobs numbers would improve, but also where IT employment would increase as well).

I continue to repeat my incantation “Be calm. Stay put. Things will improve.” knowing that while we do indeed see a few small rays of sunshine, the overall forecast remains pretty grey and gloomy, all the way into 2011 and beyond. But for the first time in quite a while, I find myself looking forward to the February job numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (the same BLS I mention in my first paragraph here) rather than dreading what they might portend. Let’s hope that modest or faint improvements improve somewhat themselves in the months ahead, and that the trickle of good news turns into a torrent. We could all use some encouragement, to be sure!

Ultimately, an increase in manufacturing production — and hiring — stimulates the whole economy, which is why manufacturing (also known as industrial production, when the Fed reports it monthly figures for the total output of mines and factories in the USA) is considered a “leading economic indicator.” In other worlds because industrial production prefigures where the whole economy is headed, when manufacturing jobs start picking up it’s just a matter of time before jobs in other sectors, including IT, also do likewise.

The $64 billion question for this blog is, of course, “How much time before hiring picks up in general, and in IT in particular?” It might be as short as half a year to a full year before the coming bump in industrial hiring ripples out to the economy as a whole (that’s the time range for recent recessions from the 1980s forward to the last decade), but it could be even longer.

Though things now show signs that an upturn is coming, we still have to wait to see when that might happen, and how strong (and sustained) it will be. Stay tuned!

Banner from November 09 Employment Situation Summary

Does this mean we’ve turned a corner, or is it just a momentary numbers glitch, caused perhaps by seasonal employment for the retail shopping season? Jobs are up in temporary help services and health care, but continue down in construction, manufacturing and — you guessed it — IT. I think it’s still too early to tell if this slight improvement represents a real turning point or if it’s just a momentary pause in a continuing downward slide. I’d want to see at least three or four consecutive months of improvement (and higher rates of reversal than these) before declaring an end to the continuing downward spiral that has been the US employment situation in general, and IT employment in particular, since the beginning of 2008.

That said, the decline of jobs cut for November to just 11,000 is pretty encouraging. This is the lowest such number since the recession got underway, and a big change from the numbers for August, September, and October. Also, the BLS revised the numbers for September and October to indicate that nearly 160,000 fewer jobs were lost than originally reported.

Cross your fingers, and hope for the best: perhaps we can see the corner that we would so very much like to turn. But for IT, my “sit tight” mantra remains as cogent as it has been all year long.

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 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.

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 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.

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!