Nearly everyone has been affected in some way by the global economic downturn. Unemployment has risen to 9+% while markets have stagnated and housing prices have plummeted in many areas. As I’ve noted before, high tech suffered a pretty significant hit as well: layoffs, pay cuts, benefits cuts, and other bad news has hit the industry hard in the last year.

Surprisingly though, it appears the industry wasn’t hit as hard as many others were. The loss of high tech jobs, by comparison with auto workers, retail, and other industries, was relatively minor. This might not be very comforting if you’re a laid-off techie now looking for work, but things could probably be a whole lot worse.

According to some recent statistics, job losses declined in the June-July period and tech actually gained somewhat. The analysis suggests that “despite an uptick in jobs in June, the high-tech industry overall employs fewer people than in 2008. The industry as of June 2009 employed some 5.81 million workers, a decline of 224,100 jobs (3.7%) since June 2008.”

The per-sector numbers mirror industry trends, with more jobs lost in networking (45,000), engineering/tech services (21,500) and communications (13,000) than in the more lucrative services & consulting areas (10,500). None of these numbers are surprising. And if you’re in the industry, you probably know that “customer-facing” positions — consulting, professional services, and even customer support — are where the jobs are.

The good news is that the economy seems to be on the mend…somewhat. There are no guarantees, but we may start seeing a better job market starting later this year. Many companies held off on upgrades, purchases, and new projects during the deepest portion of the downturn. They should start buying again soon, as the next round of major upgrades becomes unavoidable.

If you’re out of work and looking, brush up your skills. If you’ve managed to retain your job so far, keep learning new technologies and don’t let yours become “stale.” Engineers have a shelf life, just like any other product. What does your sell-by date look like?

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Industry, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.