Tech Job Market Not Getting Any Better
While the unemployment figures released Friday suggest that the worst of the recession may be over, the people who hire tech workers aren't showing it. — Eighty-one percent of businesses said that they are scaling back their hiring of information-technology pros …
Context & Ripple Effects
A month after layoffs appeared to be slowing while tech jobs remained scarce, employers are still not converting a broader economic-bottoming narrative into IT hiring. The reported pullback by 81% of businesses shows that a slowing rate of job losses is not yet a recovery in demand for tech labor.
First-order effects
- Businesses scaling back IT recruitment reduce the pool of openings available to information-technology professionals despite signs that the wider recession may be easing.
Second-order effects
- A slower pace of layoffs does not translate into rehiring when employers keep requisitions closed, prolonging scarcity in the tech job market.
Third-order effects
- The gap between aggregate economic signals and employers' technology hiring points to a labor-market recovery that can lag the broader cycle, with hiring plans acting as the constraint.
The trend: Tech employment is tracking a recession pattern in which firms curb new hiring before, and for longer than, layoffs alone reveal.