Sweet and Sour of the job market

The sweet

Recently I have been working some short term projects out of town. During a recent stay in the Chicago area I caught a news article on Chicago’s NBC Channel 5’s morning show in which they announced that CareerBuilder reported that 41% of people who responded to a survey had found jobs within the first 3 months of being laid off.

The reality

When I looked at the CareerBuilder press release, it was noted that the survey was taken earlier this year, but only 807 people responded to it. It seems like a cheap shot at publicity on CareerBuilder’s part if you only use a small sampling of unemployed people. Even Gallup wouldn’t release something using these numbers. If you take 807 and divide it by the amount of people currently laid off or unemployed, I don’t think your calculator would have enough places to the right of the decimal point to give an answer.

The Sour

April 3 of this year, Dice reported that in the past year over year for March, there has been a drop of 45% in available Tech Jobs. Their year-to-year drops showed January down 39.3%, and February down 40.4%.

When I made my rounds of recruiters this morning, I referenced this article and they said from their experiences it could be pretty accurate. The amount of tech jobs listed with them has dropped considerably. The positions that need filled are usually specialized jobs with specific skill sets requested.

Now what?

When the market was good companies were willing to hire an experienced person who maybe was missing a needed skill set but was willing to train them in that area. It doesn’t seem that this current economy is friendly to the IT sector. Maybe it’s time to strengthen our current skills or reach out and embrace new technology that has a need for qualified employees.

Photo courtesy Flickr by LexnGer