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.

Full-size chart available on Jobs. Trends. Insight.

Several occupations are worth noting.

Network and Computer Systems Administrators saw a significant jump in postings in September. Postings improved 10%.

Source: WANTED Analytics

Conversely, both types of Computer Software Engineers – Systems Software and Applications – saw a precipitous drop over the past couple of weeks. Applications Software Engineers dropped 5.8%, and Systems Software Engineers dropped 7.4%.

Source: WANTED Analytics

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

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.

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 2.3 percent since mid-July. Compared to last year, Hiring Demand for IT occupations is now down 40.1 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 for August now show four of the IT occupations with the greatest demand in Silicon Valley as ranking above the national average ('Web Developers' falls under 'Computer Programmers'): 'Computer Software Engineers, Applications', at 121.80, 'Computer Programmers', at 111.26; 'Computer Software Engineers, Systems Software', at 106.14; and 'Computer Systems Analysts' at 103.2.  Supply/Demand Ratios measure Hiring Demand for an occupation in a local market, relative to the labor supply in that market, and controlling for the national average Hiring Demand for that occupation.

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

With the exception of a three week period in June, Hiring Demand has been growing an average of 0.8% a week since March, or 3.6% a month for the past 4 months. This corresponds to the rally in the stock markets.

Improvements are spread across most sectors of the US economy. Seven of the top eight Metropolitan Areas improved, as did 19 of 23 broad Occupational groups covered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Four weeks ago, Hiring Demand was down 29.5% on a year-over-year basis. Hiring Demand is now down only 27.1% compared to last year.  This relative improvement of 2.4% controls for seasonal fluctuations.

Source: WANTED Analytics

Hiring Demand is up 25.3% since last month in Washington as we detailed last week. In the Northeast, Hiring Demand is up 10% in Boston, 9% in New York, and 7% in Philadelphia. Across the rest of the United States, Hiring Demand is up 2.4% in Los Angeles, 1.9% in Atlanta, and 1.6% in Chicago. Only Dallas fell slightly, down 0.1%.

Source: WANTED Analytics

Hiring Demand has increased in  most "business" occupations. Management Occupations are up 8.2%, Legal Occupations are up 6.6%, Business and Financial Occupations are up 4.1%, Sales Occupations are up 4.0%, Office and Administrative Occupations are up 3.2%, and Computer and Mathematical Occupations are up 2.3%.

Primary and secondary industries are also doing well. Production Occupations are up 5.0%, and Construction and Extraction Occupations are up 4.5%.

There are only two sore spots in the economy. Health Care Occupations are down 7.5%. Transportation is also down 6.2%. The Transportation industry lost 22,400 jobs in July, after having lost only 11,600 job in June.

Source: WANTED Analytics

The chart below compares June (gray) and July Hiring Demand (maroon). Hiring Demand is still weaker than it was last year, but is improving.

Full-size chart available on Jobs. Trends. Insight.

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

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.

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

Compared to last year, Hiring Demand for IT occupations is down 35.7%. It was down only 30% last month. "Network Systems and Data Communications Analysts", which had been relatively spared so far, saw the largest relative drop in Hiring Demand, falling 9% to -18.2% compared to a year ago.

Full-size chart available on Jobs. Trends. Insight.

Only "Computer and Information Research Scientists" have shown growth. However, IT research scientists represent less than 1% of all IT workers. Since this is a small and highly specialized group, Hiring Demand for these workers has usually displayed more variance.

The bright news is that despite this slight setback, Hiring Demand has been steady after completely missing the usual January "rebound in hiring". Even though Hiring Demand is half of what it was in January 2008, it has at least stabilized.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

Radio One (NASDAQ:ROIA) was a top gainer on July 17th. Radio One has appeared in three consecutive weekly Gazelles Reports. Its Hiring Demand for advertising, marketing, or sales related occupations marks strong growth in its core business.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

RadioShack (NYSE: RSH) has appeared in our Gazelles Report for five consecutive weeks. Its stock has appreciated more than 200% since March 9th, 2009. Hiring Demand at RadioShack has progressed in all major US markets. On an occupational level, Hiring Demand has surged for retail sales workers and their supervisors.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

SAIC (NYSE: SAI), short for Science Applications International Corporation, has seen its Hiring Demand rise by 50% since June. Hiring Demand for computer occupations has shown a nice progression. SAIC stock has been trading within a relatively stable $16-$18 bound since March.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

Finally, Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) has shown a slight softening in its Hiring Demand, matched by softening of its stock price.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

This month's slippage is particularly due to a robust month of May – on a seasonally adjusted basis May's Hiring Demand was up 10% compared to April. Because of May's increase in Hiring Demand, in combination with improving month-over-month declines in Nonfarm Payroll Employment (the revised drop for May was -322,000, whereas April's final number was -519,000), WANTED had forecast an optimistic drop of 260,000 in Nonfarm Payroll Employment. Despite the slight slippage this month, Hiring Demand has moved from "being flat" to starting to show signs of a possible uptrend.

The two time-series charts of new online job ads, one weekly series and one monthly series, show that since the drop off in December, Hiring Demand has been slowly inching up.  (Usually the series "bounces back" in January, but, given the recession, new job ads did not come back to the previous calendar year's level.)  This corresponds to slightly improving UI claims data and slowing in the month-over-month drops in US Employment.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

Only three major occupations have shown relative improvement this month, with 20 other occupations showing slippage in Hiring Demand. Sales and Related Occupations improved by 5.7% in June after improving 1.2% in May. Healthcare Support Occupations improved by 1.4% after having improved 6.5% in May. Transportation and Material Moving Occupations improved only marginally by 0.2%, after having seen a decline of 5.6% in May.

Full-size chart available on Jobs. Trends. Insight.

The following graph, sourced from WANTED Analytics 2.0, takes a closer look at the top five occupations in terms of job postings. Sales and Related Occupations is the only top five occupation to have improved since last month on a year-over-year basis. Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations are down 6.8%; Management Occupations are down 5.9%; Computer and Mathematical Occupations are down 4.3%; Business and Financial Operations Occupations are down 4.2%. There are usually seasonal declines in Hiring Demand in June compared to May, but year-over-year comparisons remove these seasonal effects.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

Looking at the data by geography, the top US markets have also shown progression since January. The top seven US Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) have shown robust Hiring Demand through March/April/May/June.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

We can expect continuing losses in US Nonfarm Employment Payroll, but at a slower pace.  As Hiring Demand positions itself to show upward trending, the overall labor market will stabilize, with the hope that employment will start to grow by the end of Q3 2009.

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

Silicon Valley Hiring Demand for this sector is down 12.7 percent from its 2009 peak in early February but, overall, appears to have stabilized.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

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

Last week we posted an update to our Hiring Demand Indicator data for the IT sector, which showed that overall conditions had improved slightly for IT professionals nation-wide. 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.

The outlook for the sector remains guarded. Forrester Research now predicts that global IT spending will decline 10.6 percent this year, an increase from the 3 percent it had previously forecast.

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

8 of the 10 IT Occupations have shown relative improvement in Hiring Demand.  Only 'Network and Computer Systems Administrators' and 'Computer Programmers' have shown slight decreases in the level of Hiring Demand.

Full-size chart available on Jobs. Trends. Insight.

On a market-by-market basis, Hiring Demand has stabilized as well.  The only market not to have shown precipitous declines in IT Hiring Demand starting in July 2008 is the Washington, DC MSA.  In all other markets, Hiring Demand has stabilized to the levels experienced in December 2008.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

In April, US Hiring Demand was down 32.6% compared to the same period a year ago. As of May, Hiring Demand was down only 28.4% , an improvement of 4.2%.

Overall, the trend in Hiring Demand is flat, after a significant downward trend in the second half of 2008. The following time-series graph, showing the number of weekly new ads is fitted with log-linear time trends.  The pattern of job ad volume since January has been essentially flat.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

In May, 19 of the 22 major occupational groups have shown relative improvements in hiring demand compared to April.

• Computer and Mathematical Occupations, down 40% last month compared to a year ago, are down only 30% this month, an improvement of 10%.
• Management Occupations, down 37.4% last month, are down 27.5% this month, an improvement of 9.9%.
• Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations, down 27.6% last month, are down 19.2% this month, an improvement of 8.4%.
• The only occupations to show growth on a year-over-year basis are Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations.

Full-size chart available on Jobs. Trends. Insight.

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

General Dynamics (NYSE: GD) has increased its number of IT job postings by 63% in the past month. It posted over 3,900 new IT job ads in April, compared to 2,500 for March. General Dynamics has continued strong activity over the past three weeks as well, posting 2,200 jobs just last week. This uptick in IT job listings is also supported by increases in both the number of Management and Engineering job listings, although the volume for these two occupations is in the 700 range. Most of the jobs are located in the Washington, DC area, and most General Dynamics job postings have recently been seen on CareerJournal and JobServe. General Dynamics stock is up 70% since the 52 week low in early March of this year.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) has started recruiting again to levels seen in mid 2008. After three consecutive months of around 5,000 new job ads, Bank of America has posted 8,277 jobs in March and 12,500 jobs in April. A similar number of open jobs were posted in May. Office and Administrative Support positions, Business and Financial Occupations, as well as Management Occupations lead the way. Most Bank of America jobs can be found on America's Job Exchange, JOBCentral, Job Target, and Career Mag. Bank of America stock is up almost five-fold from its 52-week low, experienced on February 20th.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

Avon Products (NYSE: AVP) has more than tripled the number of open positions for Sales Occupations, posting 531 job ads during the week of May 17, compared to 140 in each of the previous two weeks. This spike in hiring comes from an increase of 100 on All Retail Jobs and 310 new postings on Regional Help Wanted, after six months of very low activity on that site. Avon stock is up 100% from its 52-week low on March 9, 2009.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

The Dr.Pepper Snapple group has shown a consistent uptick in hiring since March, coinciding with a 100% return on its stock price since the 52-week low on March 9th. It posted 358 jobs in February, 394 in March, then 787 in April, and we expect that it will have posted possibly up to 1,000 new jobs in May, once the May data is closed out. The leading occupations have been Management and Transportation and Material Moving Occupations.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

Finally, the US Army has been advertising for an increasing number of Health Care positions since December of 2008, and recent advertising has intensified. It placed around 2,000 to 2,500 new Health Care job ads per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, but posted more than 8,500 new Health Care ads in January, followed by 5,600 in February, 4,900 in March, and 5,400 in April.  We expect more than 6,000 new ads will have been posted in May once that data is compiled. Most job ads are for "Physicians and Surgeons, all other", which point to specialties such as psychiatry or specialized surgeons. The other most frequently posted positions are Registered Nurses, followed by Medical and Health Services Managers. Most of this recent activity has been on a job board called The Job Cure, a Health Care specific site.

Source: WANTED Analytics 2.0

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

Full-size chart available on Jobs. Trends. Insight.

What's more, IT workers have been hit harder than the national average this month. Last month, both IT and National hiring demand was down 30%, year-over-year. This month, National hiring demand is down 32%, whereas IT is down 38%.

The number of new job ads is expected to continue to decline through the end of May, not only because of the downward trend for IT workers, but also because May has typically displayed a downward seasonal effect. The past three years, there has been an average drop of 18,000 new job ads during the last week of May.

We expect that June will show month-over-month increases in hiring demand, mostly again because of seasonal effects. However, we expect the overall downward trend to continue through at least June.

The only IT occupation to show year-over-year gains are "Computer and Information Scientists, Research", with 941 new job ads in April 2009 compared to 764 new job ads in April 2008. However, these workers represent less than 1% of all IT employment and recruitment has been highly targeted: most of the job ad volume gain has been on AfterCollege.com. This very small group of highly educated and highly specialized workers does not buck the overall trend.

The IT occupations that have shown the most resistance to the recession are "network" folks and system software engineers, as explained by last month's IT industry analysis.

Hiring demand for "Computer Software Engineers, Applications", one of the most important IT occupations based on total employment, is down 37.5% since last year. Last month, hiring demand for that occupation was down only 31%, year-over-year.

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

Source: WANTED Analytics

Since we last reported on Silicon Valley IT hiring a month ago, hiring demand has dropped 16 percent from its first quarter peak in early February. Despite a couple of very slight upticks at the end of April, levels of hiring demand remain below the prior three-year low seen in early January.

While quarterly earnings reports for major tech stocks such as  Oracle and Google create some cautious optimism for a rebound, disappointing earnings news from Silicon Valley giant Hewlett-Packard could keep that optimism in check. Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard yesterday estimated a drop in fiscal 2009 earnings of four to five percent and announced that it is planning to eliminate an additional 6,400 workers over the next 12 months due to poor sales numbers for PCs and printers.

Later this week, we will post an update to our Hiring Demand Indicator data for the IT sector. 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. March HDI data for IT Occupations may be found here.

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

Full-size chart available on Jobs. Trends. Insight.

WANTED's Hiring Demand Indicators show that the IT occupations losing the least ground from March 2008 to March 2009 are high-value IT workers and those responsible for maintaining corporate IT infrastructure: Network and Computer Systems Administrators; Network Systems and Data Communications Analysts; and Computer Software Engineers – System Software.  Hiring demand is down only 11% or 12% for these occupations. Database Administrators are the exception, losing 33%.

IT professionals concentrated in the IT industry or those with lower skill levels and lower salaries have been hit harder. Computer Software Engineers – Applications, and Computer Programmers have lost 31.1% year-over-year. Computer Support Specialists, the least-skilled and lowest-paid of IT occupations, fared the worst. Unique new job ads in this occupation are down 39%.

The table below breaks out IT occupations by year-over-year growth, providing more in-depth information on number of jobs, average salary levels, a job difficulty rating from the Occupational Information Network, WANTED data on the number of unique job ads posted in the previous 90 days within those occupations, and the percent of  IT employees by occupation working in the IT industry.

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation

Source: WANTED Analytics

Later this week, we will post Hiring Demand Indicator data for the IT sector showing national year-over-year growth broken down by 6-digit SOC codes, showing which occupations within IT have seen the most severe drop in hiring demand, and those that are weathering the recession better than average.

© Copyright 2009 WANTED Technologies Corporation