[CLUE-Talk] Re: A Call to Action

[Jed S. Baer]

On Wed, 17 Jul 2002 04:24:32 +0000
jccann at attbi.com wrote:

> >   U.S. unemployment rate for June: 5.9%; the May 
> figure of 5.8% was the
> >     highest in eight years.
> 
> It's been higher.  For example, in 1982, it surpassed 
> 10%.  In the 1930s, it was 25%.  My point -- 5.9% sounds 
> like a lot unless you consider that since 1970 the 
> average U.S. unemployment rate is 5%.  
>  + http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/bus/A0850018.html

The national average is informative only to a certain extent. It doesn't
take into account local variations, or market segments. For example, there
is a local shortage of health-care professionals. I know of at least a few
IT professionals who have been out of work (in their field, anyway) for
months.

> What do you think is the root cause of this problem?  I 
> know it is not the people because they are highly 
> skilled and intelligent.

That isn't the hiring criteria in use now. To wit: (from Dice)

  You MUST have experience in furniture manufacturing to be
  considered for this position.
  Bachelor's Degree in related field or 5 + years of related
  exp. Need exp with Oracle applications for transactiion
  reports for inventory

IOW, if you don't come from the exactly matching pigeonhole, and have
_all_ of the listed languages, databases and OSs', don't even bother us.
Many job postings I see have the rejection letter already, in essence,
contained in their text. Looking out-of-state? "Only LOCAL candidates are
being considered."

> I wonder if the so called 'dot com' era, referred to by 
> Alan Greenspan as a period of 'irrational exhuberance' 
> in the stock markets caused an artificial shortage in IT 
> labor.  This shortage was caused by the insatiable 
> demand for technology at the expense of common sense and 
> good business judgement.  The shortage drove up our 
> salaries, which is nice if you sill have one.  However, 
> now that the money is gone the tech spending has 
> declined.  The result is that the artificial shortage of 
> IT labor is also gone.  Now, jobs are scarce in our 
> field and many intelligent and skilled folks cannot 
> break through.

I don't think you can call it "artificial", but nevermind that. There's
more to it than just that anyway, although it's a component, in that
companies which have retained workers are still paying them those inflated
wages. At least I haven't heard of people taking forced pay cuts in the IT
sector. Thus, the personnel budgets are in that way "strained". But there
are other constraints on budgets, such as the costs of maintaining
overbuilt infrastructure, and servicing the debt incurred during the
creation of it. This is more an issue in the telco arena than elswhere.
And on top of the depressed IT labor market, the supply is large, due to
the layoffs by Qwest, MCI, Rythms, ICG, et. al.

> >   Major employers are moving jobs with abandon to low-
> > wage countries: Quark, Qwest ...
> 
> Corporations exist to make money for their 
> shareholders.  They have and will continue to cut jobs 
> to save money and reach or maintain profitability.  This 
> is the cruel reality of corporations.  Well, it's cruel 
> if your downsized but if you're a shareholder it's not.  
> Corporations do not exist to provide jobs, they exist 
> (and have a legal / fudiciary responsibility) to pay 
> their shareholders.  We, as workers for such 
> corporations, are simple pawns to be thrown away when 
> the going gets tough.
> 
> >   Job listings on Monster.com, Dice.com, etc. are few 
> and far between.

Depends on where you're looking. Comparatively, there is a plethora of IT
work in Washington - Seattle, Tacoma, Redmond ...

jed
-- 
We're frogs who are getting boiled in a pot full of single-character
morphemes, and we don't notice. - Larry Wall; Perl6, Apocalypse 5