IT Employment Continues to Gain

Computerworld, September 7

Based on the latest data from the U.S. Labor Department, IT hiring continues to gain momentum, with signs emerging that high demand exists for people to fill jobs in specific IT occupations. Even research groups that tend to arrive at different opinions and viewpoints about U.S. employment data for the tech sector agree on the large macro-trend: IT hiring is up across the nation. While the month-over-month rate of growth is not quite as robust as it was earlier in the year, IT employment overall remains strong. From July to August, the number of IT jobs increased by 5,100 - bringing overall IT employment to almost 4.2 million.

Janco Associates, a research and consulting firm, counted a month-to-month increase of 12,400 IT jobs -- a figure that represents nearly 13% of the 96,000 jobs the Labor Department says were added overall in the U.S. in August. In its report, TechServe Alliance included unpublished Labor Department unemployment data for some specific job categories. For instance, from the first quarter to the second quarter of this year, the unemployment rate of computer hardware engineers went from 4.4% to 0.5%. For software developers, the unemployment rate shrank from 3.6% to 2.5% over the same period.

However, not all areas are growing as quickly. For computer support specialists, the unemployment rate rose from 7.1% in the first quarter to 8.2% in the second. The data for specific labor categories has to be viewed with caution because of the sample size, but it definitely shows a tightening supply. Janco conducts ongoing surveys of CIOs to assess their hiring goals, noting that many CIOs are cautious but feel that overall hiring will improve significantly in 2013 and are initially budgeting accordingly.

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Silicon Valley's Top Threat Is China, Survey Finds

Computerworld (06/28/12) Patrick Thibodeau

Many high-level technology executives are convinced that some other country, probably China, will supplant Silicon Valley as the global center for innovation within the next four years, according to a KPMG survey of 668 executives.  The finding that 44 percent of respondents expected this shift was surprising to KPMG's Gary Matuszak, but he notes that 42 percent of survey participants were from the Asia-Pacific region.  Among U.S. respondents, 28 percent also think Silicon Valley will lose its status as the world's innovation hub, while 39 percent do not.  Matuszak says the survey's chief observation is not a diminishing in Silicon Valley's leadership, but rather greater emphasis on innovation in other parts of the world.  He stresses that Silicon Valley stands apart by virtue of an entire ecosystem built up to support innovation, which another region would find very difficult to duplicate.  Information Technology Innovation Foundation president Robert Atkinson says that even if Chinese-owned companies do not become innovation leaders, the Chinese economy "may become an innovation leader if its policies result in foreign multinationals moving even more innovation-based activities to China."  He says China wants "to make virtually everything, especially advanced technology products and services."

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9228619/Silicon_Valley_s_top_threat_is_China_survey_finds