IT Joblessness Declines Slightly In November

Yahoo! News ^ | Dec 24 2003

[optimistically_conservative]

IT unemployment through November stood at 5.65%, down one-tenth of a percentage point from October's annualized rate.

Analysis of government employment data reveals that computer programmers remain the IT job category with the highest unemployment rate, at 6.54%, down from 6.82% in October. The IT category with the lowest unemployment was computer scientists and systems analysts, which suffered a jobless rate of 5.14% in November. That's down from 5.59% in October, however. The unemployment rate for other IT job categories in November:

Software engineer, 5.3% Computer and information-systems manager, 5.34% Network and computer-systems administrator, 5.43% Computer-support specialist, 5.62% Network-systems and data-communications analyst, 6.24% Database administrator, 6.46%

According to the analysis, the IT workforce topped 3.5 million in November, up slightly from October. The category with the largest workforce through November was software engineer, at 797,445. The smallest IT workforce category was database administrator, with 75,610 workers.

Unlike the overall employment numbers, which are seasonally adjusted and fell to 5.9% in November from 6% in October, the IT data are unadjusted, making month-to-month comparisons problematic.

The results here reflect InformationWeek's analysis of data collected monthly in a household survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our analysis each month is based on an aggregate of the yearly employment data to that point. Thus, November's results aggregate data collected from January through November. Beginning in 2003, the government designated new job categories, so direct and accurate comparisons with previous years are impossible.

[taxcontrol]

Some personal historical perspective - when I graduated HS, my counties unemployment rate back in '82 was in the top 5 counties by percentages in the whole US. If memory serves, it was 22%. Piper aircraft and the phosphate mines had just laid off many thousands of people.

I'm sure there are people who are out of work, but these percentages are very good - historically speaking.

[optimistically_conservative]

Yep, I when I graduated HS the national unemployment rate was around 10%. 6% was considered full employment.

This has been the shallowest recession since WWII, and the whiners are in full force.