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While recent data suggests that unemployment and job creation are lagging behind other major economic indexes, as the global recession weakens, a new poll conducted by Monster reflects growing optimism among workers worldwide that the job market is on the road to recovery. More than half of the 30,000 respondents felt the same or more optimistic than they did a year ago when asked their views on the job market. Nearly 10 percent characterized themselves as “much more optimistic,” 17 percent “more optimistic,” and 26 percent “about the same.” Some 20 percent, however, said they were “less optimistic” and 27 percent “much less optimistic.”
Indian and Scandinavian workers showed a greater degree of optimism in their local job markets than US or European Union counterparts. US workers, representing more than one-third of respondents, were among the least optimistic, with 51 percent having negative attitudes on the job market when compared to six months ago. British workers tended to be the least optimistic, with 56 percent indicating diminished optimism, followed closely by Spain at 54 percent. Indian workers, representing 7 percent of respondents, were the most optimistic, with over 51 percent indicating increased optimism. Among developed nations, Norwegian and Swedish workers were the most upbeat, with 29 and 15 percent, respectively, stating they are much more optimistic. The split in attitudes positively correlates with national unemployment and underemployment figures as well as consumer confidence indexes over the same time period. Nations with nationalized health care, as well as workers from developing countries, were overall more optimistic than their counterparts from countries with employer-based health care or developed nations.
Ontario, Canada, is supporting a new commercialization center that will help digital media entrepreneurs build new companies and create jobs. The province plans to invest more than $26 million (Cdn.) in the Communitech Hub: Digital Media & Mobile Accelerator, a new center that will help emerging digital media companies grow and succeed in the global market. In particular, the Hub will look beyond the entertainment sector to focus on companies creating hardware and software for industries, including advanced manufacturing, healthcare and finance. Based in the Waterloo region, the Hub expects thousands of jobs could be created over the first five years by serving entrepreneurs across the province. This investment supports Ontario’s Innovation Agenda, the province’s plan to make innovation a driving force of Ontario’s economy. The Hub will focus on commercialization, business development, and access to financing. It will offer state-of-the-art tools and lab space, with equipment and support provided by industry leaders including Open Text Corp., Christie Digital Systems Canada, Intel, Agfa HealthCare, and Research In Motion.
As Americans worry that the US is losing its global technology edge, an overwhelming majority of Chinese expect China to overtake the US on technology innovation over the next 30 years. Meanwhile, according to a special report by Intel and Newsweek, only 14 percent of Europeans view their region as a global technology leader. Worldwide, those surveyed by Intel and Newsweek said that the economic downturn has hurt the US’s ability to innovate, although such innovation is still critical to the country’s future economic success.
Despite many nations giving the US credit for leadership in technology innovation today, only one-third of Americans see the country leading over the next 30 years. Many see the US education system as a barrier to its future technological dominance; 82 percent of those surveyed believe the United States lags behind other countries in the quality of K-12 math and science education. Most Americans expect the next groundbreaking innovation will come from corporations and startups, although 78 percent said a national initiative would help. In contrast with Americans, Europeans and Chinese were more likely to look to universities to be future sources of innovation.
Science and engineering degrees are up across the board, with increases in the number received by minority students, according to a US National Science Foundation report. The data show a 3.9 percent increase in awarded S&E bachelor’s degrees, a 1.6 percent increase in master’s degrees, and a 13.6 percent increase in doctoral degrees. That compares with a 5.2 percent increase in non S&E bachelor’s degrees, a 6.5 percent in master's degrees, and a 0.7 percent decline for doctorates in non-S&E fields. Overall, computer sciences made the largest gains among doctoral students at 53.2 percent, but the field also showed the steepest decline among bachelor's and master's degree students, falling 24.6 percent and 16.4 percent respectively.
The report, Science and Engineering Degrees by Race/Ethnicity: 1997-2006, shows more degrees awarded to minorities in nearly all categories. Among US citizens and permanent residents who earned bachelor's degrees from fiscal year 2004 to 2006, Asians showed the largest rate of increase--10.5 percent. American Indian/Alaska Natives showed the smallest at 1.3 percent. There were also more Hispanics among master’s degree recipients. The number of Hispanics receiving master’s degrees grew by 13.1 percent, while the number of blacks grew by a similar amount--13 percent. White students showed the smallest growth rate at 5.9 percent. Although American Indian/Native American and black students showed increases in terms of bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded, these groups showed sharp declines relative to doctoral degrees, falling off by 9.1 and 9.8 percent respectively. The number of Asian, Hispanic and white doctorate recipients increased by 15.8, 16.1 and 2.5 percent respectively.
Responding to a still sluggish economy, IT executives in North America and Europe are taking a variety of measures to get more value for the money spent on IT services, according to the latest Enterprise IT Services Survey by Forrester Research. According to the survey results, IT contractors and consultants will see the deepest decreases in spending, while systems integration and outsourcing services will have the most increases. The survey of more than 900 IT executives and technology decision-makers in Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the US offers insights into the decisions large companies are making with regard to their IT services and outsourcing.
Unlike during the last recession from 2001 to 2002, when outsourcing and offshoring experienced growth from firms seeking to reduce internal IT costs, the picture for IT services is much more mixed in terms of spending plans. When asked about changes they expect to see in their organization’s total spending on IT services, 30 percent of executives said they plan to increase spending on systems integration and project work, 26 percent plan increases in applications outsourcing, and 25 percent expect to increase spending on infrastructure outsourcing. However, 41 percent of executives expect to reduce spending on contractors, and 34 percent foresee lower spending on IT consulting. “The pressure to reduce IT spending is going to continue well into 2010,” stated Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst John McCarthy. “The data shows no quick turnaround — it’s going to be a tough year for services firms as clients increasingly ask them to justify the ROI for IT projects and provide more value for a lower price.”
Nearly 80 percent of information technology professionals use social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube, but one-fifth of them don’t use social networking sites at all, according to a recent CompTIA survey. Of the major social networking sites, Facebook was the most popular, with 57 percent of respondents indicating that they had been active on the site within the previous month. YouTube was the second most popular site, used by more than half of respondents, followed by MySpace (29 percent), Twitter (25 percent), and LinkedIn (22 percent). Nearly three quarters of the IT professionals used the sites for personal purposes, and about one-quarter for personal and professional reasons. Only seven percent engaged in social networking solely for work.
Ed Korenman, vice president of global marketing and communications at CompTIA, said their use of work-related online discussion forums and virtual communities suggests that professional collaboration is taking place outside of social networking sites. The survey found IT professionals actively participate in more work-related online communities and discussion forms than non-work-related groups. Among those who participated in online communities and forums, the majority were searching for answers to questions and nearly half to share information with colleagues. According to the study, expert advice was the most highly-desired feature of an online community. A two-way idea exchange was the second-most-popular feature, followed by a directory.
Job cuts that US employers announced in October declined by 16 percent from the previous month, continuing a two-month trend of declines, according to outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Employers announced 55,679 cuts, down from 66,404 in September. The October cuts were the lowest since March 2008, and nearly half the levels announced in October 2008. The pace of downsizing has slowed steadily throughout the year after reaching a seven-year peak of 241,749 in January, the consultant reported. Despite the downward trend, the 1.2 million layoffs announced so far this year are one-third higher than at the same time last year. Challenger, Gray, & Christmas warned that the auto industry, and government and nonprofit sector are primed for further cuts.
A decline in broadband services investment could lead to the loss of thousands of jobs, according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and research done by former FCC Commissioner and economist Harold Furchtgott-Roth. Bruce Mehlman, co-chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, said it’s important to understand the risks of declining investment. He pointed out that according to ITIF and Furchtgott-Roth, a 2 percent reduction in investment would eliminate between 24,000 and 31,000 jobs, a 5 percent reduction would eliminate between 47,000 and 78,000 jobs, and a 10 percent decline could eliminate more than 100,000 jobs. The ITF’s Rob Atkinson stated that increased investment from related industries, such as software and online content providers, aren’t big enough to make up for the declines in broadband spending. According to the US Commerce Department, the broadband services sector, which includes telecom, currently accounts for about 80 percent of the total annual investment made by the $70 billion information, communications, and technology sector.
Third-quarter data shows that the unemployment rate has eased for US electrical and electronics engineers, after reaching a record high in the second quarter, according to IEEE-USA. For the engineering profession as a whole, the rate continued to climb, but more slowly. The jobless rate for EEs dropped from 8.6 percent in the second quarter to 7.3 percent in the third. Quarter to quarter, the EE workforce grew by 26,000. For civil engineers, the unemployment rate dropped from 4.7 percent to 3.6 percent, but for mechanical engineers, it rose from 5.6 percent to 9.5 percent. Overall, engineering joblessness rose to 5.9 percent, a 0.4 percentage point increase compared to a 1.6 percentage point increase in the second quarter. The unemployment rate for computer professionals went from 5.4 percent in the second quarter to 6 percent in the third. Software engineers showed a slight decline (4.7 percent vs. 5 percent), while computer scientists and systems analysts experienced an increase (7.3 percent vs. 6.4 percent). “These mixed data suggest that the worst may be passing, but we are still a long way from the levels of engineering unemployment we would expect to see in a strong economy,” IEEE-USA President Gordon Day said. “We are also encouraged that announcements of layoffs in the high-tech sector appear to have subsided, after peaking early in the year. A clear turnaround in engineering unemployment would be a very positive sign for the general workforce, since engineers create new jobs in many categories.” Career enhancement resources are available for IEEE members at http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/. Help for unemployed and at-risk members is available at http://www.ieeeusa.org/careers/help/.
By 2014, citizen developers will build at least 25 percent of new business applications, an advance should enable end users and free up IT resources, according to market-research firm Gartner. The analyst firm warned that IT organizations that don’t capitalize on the opportunities will find themselves unable to respond to rapidly changing market forces and customer preferences. Eric Knipp, a Gartner senior research analyst, told attendees at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Florida, that mass personalization, infrastructure industrialization, changing demographics, and developer tool evolution are driving the trend.
He traced the coining of the term “4GL”-- describing application development performed by business users—to James Martin’s 1982 book “Applications Development Without Programmers.” Kipp said that over the past half-century, adoption of the practice has spread during four waves of 4GL enterprise adoption. Furthermore, cloud computing has unlocked the market for 4GL-style development environments delivered as a service, indicating that rapid growth will occur through 2014 as cloud computing matures, Kipp said. Better technology has made it easier to become a developer, but Knipp warned that organizations must recognize the limits of citizen developers and differentiate between the types of applications that IT can afford to let go of and those that it needs to maintain and manage more formally.
