Computer/Math/IT – Jobs. Trends. Insight.

IT Hiring Staggers in Q2 – Tech Stocks drop 8%

By Charles Thibault on July 30, 2010 in Computer/Math/IT, Information Technology - XLK.

After 12 months of steady growth, hiring in the Information Technology sector went flat in Q2. The S&P Technology index fell by 8% during the second quarter of 2010 as a result (NYSE:XLK).

The following graphs the number of new online job postings for IT workers in the United States, monthly:

Source: WANTED Analytics - Hiring Demand Dashboard

15 months ago, there were 72,000 paid-for online job postings for IT workers in the United States (we exclude free sites like Craig's List). Online job postings for IT workers grew by about 2.4% a month on average for a full year – the equivalent of an additional 2,350 new job postings a month – before settling at the 102,000 mark in March. Since then, however, hiring for new IT workers has gone flat, and even fell by 1.7% in April.

Overall hiring is still half its pre-recession levels.

Stock markets have taken notice: since hitting a 52-week high of 24.08 in April, the S&P 500 Technology sector SPDR ETF sits at 22.19 today, a 7.8% drop (NYSE:XLK). This is a better result than a month ago (July 2), when the sector index stood at 20.29, a 15.7% drop relative to the April high. The pick-up in the sector index over the past month has been matched by a slight increase in June IT Hiring.

The following graph shows the number of online job postings for IT workers in the United States (using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Standard Occupational Classification system for "Computer Specialists") and the evolution of the S&P Technology index (NYSE:XLK).

Source: WANTED Analytics, Google Finance

More important, however, is the analysis of the yearly returns of the S&P Technology index and the yearly growth in Hiring Demand: equity analysts care about the future returns of an index, and yearly growth rate in Hiring Demand appropriately captures evolving temporal dynamics as well as having the advantage of being free of seasonal variation. Notice how the stock market index picked up about 6 months before hiring did – stock markets are usually forward-looking by about six months. Notice too how the slow-down in the Hiring Demand growth rate in February has caused returns of the S&P Technology sector index to lose steam. In other words, the stock markets may have gotten a little ahead of themselves, and the slow-down in hiring meant that aggressive forward-looking expectations were no longer sustainable.

Source: WANTED Analytics, Google Finance

The following table lists the Top 25 companies in terms of IT job postings over the past three months:

Advertiser	Job Postings – May, June, July 2010
Deloitte	4,098
General Dynamics Information Technology	3,992
Microsoft Corporation	2,680
Northrop Grumman	2,238
SPARTA Inc	1,818
Unitedhealth Group	1,579
IBM	1,523
SAIC	1,501
AT&T	1,404
HP	1,313
Amazon.com	1,290
Raytheon	1,274
ManTech International	1,178
Lockheed Martin	1,038
Booz Allen Hamilton	876
Emc Corporation	860
SRA International	836
GE Energy	814
BAE Systems	753
Kaiser Permanente	667
Dell	653
Google	602
Harris Corporation	601
Yahoo!	592
Agile Enterprise Solutions	578

IT Hiring is Growing: 185,000 New Online Job Ads in April

By Charles Thibault on May 7, 2010 in Computer/Math/IT.

The number of online job ads for Information Technology professionals is up 34% compared to last year according to data from WANTED Analytics, which tracks job postings on over a thousand job boards.

There were 185,000 online job ads for IT workers in April, compared to only 138,000 last year.

Total Hiring Demand for IT workers is still well below the 2008 pre-recession peak of 240,000 job ads, however.

There are approximately 3 million IT workers in the United States, creating a ratio of one job ad for every 16 IT workers. A year ago, 23 IT workers had to compete for the same job.

IT hiring is on a year-long upward trend affecting most types of IT jobs. Web developers have particularly come on strong, with the number of online job postings approaching 2007 (but not 2008) levels :

Information Technology - 4-year hiring trend

Source: WANTED Analytics

Hiring Demand has bounced back up nicely in California, the largest employer of IT workers in the US – Hiring Demand for IT professionals is up 36% in California compared to last year.

New York City, however, is the metro area with the most IT jobs, and Hiring Demand in the Big Apple now exceeds 2008 levels. Online job ads are up 74% in the state of New York, twice California's growth rate.

Finance, Health Care, IT Stocks Lose Momentum as Hiring Slows

By Charles Thibault on February 2, 2010 in Business/Finance, Computer/Math/IT, Finance - XLF, Health Care, Health Care - XLV, Information Technology - XLK, S&P 500 - SPY.

Several stock market industry segments have taken hits over the past two or three weeks as the labor market situation deteriorated slightly during the second half of January.

Health Care stocks are down 2.9% over the last two weeks (XLV); Information Technologies stocks are down 9.5% over the last three weeks (XLK); and Finance stocks are down 7% over the last three weeks (XLF). The 4-week moving average of new unemployment insurance claims has gone up two weeks in a row.

Hiring in these three sectors – Finance, Health Care, and Information Technologies – has slowed in the past two weeks too, falling off the positive trend they started in September. What's worse, year-over-year hiring improvements have swung from positive to negative in these sectors.

The following analysis confirms a great Q4 in terms of GDP growth (+5.7% annualized), but also suggests that growth rates are slowing.

Let's first take a second to make sure we're not presenting conflicting information about the labor market situation, particularly compared to the Conference Board's Help Wanted Online series which uses the "same" data as we present here (HWOL). That series uses a "mid-month to mid-month" time-frame in order to match the BLS's sampling framework which measures national employment on the 14th day of each month. In early January, we did see some positive labor market signals. However, national Hiring Demand fell by 3.7% two weeks ago (after the HWOL sampling period closed). Since January 19th, the S&P 500 index has lost 4.3% too. This is after the S&P 500 gained 3.6% during the first couple of weeks of January on positive December UI claims data.

The following table compares year-over-year changes in sector Hiring Demand (the number of new online job ads) and weekly returns of sector Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). Sector ETFs are tradable securities which mimic the composition and returns of the different sector indices developed by Standard & Poor's. Sector indices are sub-components of the S&P 500.

Source: WANTED Analytics, Google Finance

IT Hiring Demand Maintains Growth Trend; Washington, DC Surpasses New York

By Charles Thibault on December 10, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT, Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand for IT workers remained on trend in November, according to data from WANTED Analytics which tracks the number of online job ads on over 1,500 employment websites. On a seasonally adjusted basis, IT Hiring Demand is up 0.5%.

The end of November usually marks the start of a two month seasonal hiring slowdown. We were in fact expecting the number of job ads to fall slightly on a seasonally unadjusted basis, as shown in the graph below.

Source: WANTED Analytics

IT Hiring Demand Robust in October – Trending up 4.9% per Month (update)

By Charles Thibault on November 9, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT, Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand for "Computer and Mathematical Occupations" grew by 6.5% in October on a seasonally unadjusted basis according to data from WANTED Analytics 2.0. This confirms the positive trend we saw begin in June, when Hiring Demand starting growing at an average monthly rate of 4.9%. This positive trend has affected most US metro areas.

WANTED Analytics tracks the number of online job ads on over 1,000 employment websites:

Source: WANTED Analytics

IT Hiring Demand grew faster than the rest of the economy – national Hiring Demand, all Occupations considered, grew by 4.0% over the same period. Removing the positive effect that IT workers had on the national average, national Hiring Demand grew by only 3.3%. (In other words, IT occupations contributed 0.7% to the overall growth in national Hiring Demand).

The table below details changes in Hiring Demand by occupation. Occupations are defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and their Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System. Five occupations saw increases in Hiring Demand, while three saw drops. Drops were concentrated in "Computer Software Engineers", both "Applications" and "Systems Software".

SOC	SOC Description	Percent Change, OCT (NSA)
000000	All Occupations	4.0%
150000	Computer and Mathematical Occupations	6.5%
151071	Network and Computer Systems Administrators	9.5%
151021	Computer Programmers	9.1%
151061	Database Administrators	7.9%
151081	Network Systems and Data Communications Analysts	7.7%
151041	Computer Support Specialists	5.7%
151051	Computer Systems Analysts	-1.2%
151031	Computer Software Engineers, Applications	-5.9%
151032	Computer Software Engineers, Systems Software	-27.0%

What's more, IT Hiring Demand is growing faster now than it did during the "boom times" of 2006/2007. The following table and weekly time series chart, where the count of online job ads is taken as a natural log to facilitate trending analysis, clearly shows this:

Period	Monthly Growth Rate
Oct.2006 – June 2008	+1.2%
July 2008 – May 2009	-6.5%
June 2009 – Current	+4.9%

Top 20 Markets Hiring Computer Specialists

By Charles Thibault on October 13, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT.

In this week's Supply/Demand Ratio feature, we list the Top 20 US Markets hiring for "Computer Specialists".

Supply/Demand Ratios data are used to determine which markets have the most recruitment activity, relative to the quantity of qualified candidates already employed there. Each of the following IT workers can follow the hyperlink to produce a ranked list of cities with the most online job postings:

- Computer Programmers
- Computer Applications Engineers
- Systems Software Engineers
- Computer Systems Analysts
- Database Administrators
- Network Administrators
- Network Analysts

Combining the data from the occupations listed above, we can generate a composite list of the "Top 20" markets for IT workers. Metropolitan areas in the table below are ranked based on this composite index. All values in the table below are the city's national ranking – a value of 1 means that city displayed the most recruitment advertising nationally for that occupation:

Source: WANTED Supply/Demand Ratios

IT Hiring Demand Improves 1.1%

By Charles Thibault on September 29, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT, Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand for Computer and Mathematical Occupations has improved 1.1% over the past month, according to data from WANTED Analytics.

There are still 117,000 fewer online job ads for Computer and Mathematical workers compared to a year ago – a drop of 38.7%. However, a month ago, the year-over-year decline stood at 39.8%. This relative improvement of 1.1% is a simple way of controlling for seasonal fluctuations. Over the same period, National Hiring Demand for all occupations improved by 2.9%.

Source: WANTED Analytics

The following double-bar chart compares September's year-over-year drop (burgundy) to August's (gray). Burgundy bars that are shorter than gray ones indicate relative improvement since last month. The chart can be enlarged by clicking on it.

Click chart to view full size

Several occupations are worth noting.

Silicon Valley IT Hiring Demand Stalled in August

By Juli Morris on September 9, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT.

Online job ads for IT professionals by Silicon Valley companies ended the month of August up 15 percent from their three-year low in mid-April. Available ads reached a new 2009 high in mid-August; however, the last week of August saw a five percent drop from the prior week that erased the August gains. Total Hiring Demand remains 56 percent below its three-year high in October 2007.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

The IT occupations with the greatest Hiring Demand in Silicon Valley are 'Computer Software Engineers, Applications', 'Computer Systems Analysts', 'Web Developers', 'Computer Software Engineers, Systems Software', and 'Computer Programmers'. The direct employers with the most available online job ads this month were Apple, Yahoo!Inc., Google Inc., eBay, and Motorola. Read more »

IT Hiring Demand Down 2.3% in August, Networking Workers Hit Hardest

By Charles Thibault on September 1, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT, Hiring Demand Indicators.

Hiring Demand for Information Technology workers has dropped 2.3% since mid-July, according to data from WANTED Analytics. This fall occurs after an upswing started in the spring. National Hiring Demand dropped 0.7% over the same period.

Source: WANTED Analytics

The following bar chart compares the year-over-year percent changes from July 2009 to those in August 2009. Burgundy columns extending past the gray columns means that there are sharper year-over-year losses compared to last month.

All IT occupations have lost more ground than the national average.

Click chart to view full size

Silicon Valley IT Hiring Demand Shows Upward Movement

By Juli Morris on August 11, 2009 in Computer/Math/IT.

Online job ads for IT professionals by Silicon Valley companies have risen 15 percent after hitting a three-year low in mid-April. Total Hiring Demand, however, remains 56 percent below its three-year high in October 2007.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

The IT occupations with the greatest Hiring Demand in Silicon Valley are 'Computer Software Engineers, Applications', 'Computer Systems Analysts', and 'Computer Software Engineers, Systems Software'. The direct employers posting the most online job ads were Apple, Yahoo!Inc., Google Inc., eBay, and Motorola.

Our most recent update to our Hiring Demand Indicator data for the IT sector showed that overall conditions had worsened for IT professionals nationwide, dropping 5.7 percent in July. Compared to last year, Hiring Demand for IT occupations is now down 35.7 percent. The HDI for IT Occupations presents national year-over-year growth broken down by 6-digit SOC codes, and indicates the occupations within IT that have seen the most severe drop in hiring demand, along with those that are weathering the recession better than average.

WANTED's Supply/Demand Ratios™ for the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA show only one of the IT occupations with the greatest demand in Silicon Valley as ranking above the national average: 'Computer Software Engineers, Applications', at 121.26. 'Computer Systems Analysts', and 'Computer Software Engineers, Systems Software' register at 48.54 and 52.28, respectively. The Baltimore-Towson, MD MSA is the nationwide S/D Ratios leader for each those IT occupations. Supply/Demand Ratios measure Hiring Demand for an occupation in a local market, controlling for the national average Hiring Demand for that occupation.

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