The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the “Economy’s Grim ‘New Abnormal'”
1. The Good: There are quite a number of IT jobs, at all levels, in Albuquerque
My informal measure of IT job activity in the 505, the number of these jobs in the Careers section of the Albuquerque Journal, looks at two things: the number of jobs in the Computer Personnel section, and the number of IT jobs in the whole Employment section. Lots of these jobs appear in Professional – Degreed and Professional – Non Degreed, for instance, and some appear in Technical.
This week (January 10, 2010), there are four jobs in Computer Personnel: a network admin, a developer, a project manager and a support tech. That’s nearly the whole range of the field. But contrast this with the more than four solid columns of jobs just in this category, about a year and a half ago. That represented a probably unrealistic demand; there weren’t that many strong technical people to be found in Albuquerque.
There are an additional ten IT jobs under other headings, ranging from IT Manager to database programmer to Support Tech I. Again, these represent a healthy market in practically all IT segments, but not enormous demand. Employers actively seeking IT people, like the HP Support Center, don’t even show up in these listings, but HP in particular is vacuuming up a lot of local talent.
2. The Bad: Demand from most big employers will continue to decline
The City of Albuquerque is going to cut budget, harshly. The State is looking for necks to chop. Intel is doing things that make me wary, like outsourcing the Atom processor to Taiwan. This “will be the mother of all jobless recoveries,” notes John Steel Gordon, an historian of economics.
3. The Ugly: The “Economy’s Grim ‘New Abnormal'”
Economist David Levy is supporting many people’s suspicions: the US is facing a long, long period of high unemployment. Think, a decade or so. He’s calling the current situation the “New Abnormal.” Pay will decline, more people will compete for every job, everyone will have to delay retirement and interest rates will rise relentlessly.
Sounds about right.
But technical people should also take note: a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey projects 34 percent growth in professional, technical and scientific services. That should create some 2.7 million jobs by 2018, smack in the middle of our area.
Your task, then, is to drive yourself as far up the value chain as you can. Specialize: choose networking, or security, or database managment, or software development. Study. Read. Take classes. And make connections. You’re welcome to do that right here.