So firms are still laying off and companies are hiring. What's new about that?

Unemployment in New York City is over 9%, the state economy is lousy, the telecom industry that carried New Jersey for the last twenty years has disappeared, and you're having trouble getting interviews. Interpretation please.

I think we're starting to come out and the newspapers will be a little behind. The war is over and we won. What Al-Qaeda? Haven't heard hie nor hair of them in a while. Economy is put putting. Nationwide unemployment is 5.4%. Technology sector has gotten hammered. Many employmen agencies have disappeared or severely downsized.

BUT!

We're seeing a small uptick in consulting assignments available. New jobs are starting to open for staff level people and companies are hiring in a more reasonable amount of time. Leadership roles being hired for are stll few and far in between. The large consulting firms are picking up staff and that means here are people who need to spend money to get some big and small things done. Jobs are opening in new sectors and not just in pharma.

I think the summer is going to be pretty good.

From Informationweek

Slow Growth In IT Workforce Apr. 2, 2003
The ITAA says the number of IT workers grew only 3.3% last year, with most of the growth at non-IT companies.
By Eric Chabrow


The IT workforce last year grew just 3.3%, with much of the gain being added to non-IT companies' payrolls, according to the Information Technology Association of America. The total number of U.S. IT workers at the end of 2002 exceeded 10.2 million, up from nearly 9.9 million in 2001.

In the fourth quarter, the IT profession gained 97,000 jobs, down from the 147,000 added in the third quarter. Hiring by non-IT companies outpaced hiring by IT companies by 10-to-1 in the fourth quarter. Though companies hired fewer IT workers in the fourth quarter than in the previous three, they also dismissed fewer workers. "Both hiring and dismissals were at their lowest in the fourth quarter, showing relatively stable workforce patterns in what is often a seasonally soft quarter for hiring activity," ITAA president Harris Miller said in a statement. "Unlike late last year, we're seeing less optimism from hiring managers as they anticipate their needs over the next year, most likely because of instability from the war and other economic factors."


According to the Dice Tech Skills profile, an addendum to the study compiled by technical online recruiting company Dice Inc., Java is the most in-demand skill, growing 27% to 4,171 jobs listed on Dice in the past year. SQL Software, C and C++, Oracle, and Windows NT round out the top five skills.


Other key findings in the quarterly report:


• IT managers predict the need to hire an additional 874,327 workers over the upcoming months, down from the third quarter and the beginning of 2002.


• The hiring of network administrators increased by 45,000 as fewer than 6,000 were dismissed. Meanwhile, tech-support workers represented 55% of all IT hires during the fourth quarter of 2002, with 147,437 hired.


• Database developers saw the largest growth in 2002, climbing 6.2%, from 960,626 to 1,020,244 positions nationwide.


"The workforce continued to grow slightly throughout 2002," Dice CEO Scot Melland says, "but the vast shortages reported a few years ago are down considerably."

(And how many more do you think New Jersey lost with the implosion in the telecom industry (ATT, Lucent, Avaya and all the consultants who worked there, too?------NewYorkMetroTechnologyJobs)

STATE LOST 293,000 JOBS IN 2-YR. SLUMP

By KENNETH LOVETT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
April 22, 2003 -- ALBANY - New York lost 293,000 jobs statewide in 2001 and 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a bear market and the nationwide economic downturn, a report yesterday by state Comptroller Alan Hevesi shows.
And while the job losses have slowed, Hevesi said chances of a major turnaround in New York this year will depend greatly on improvements in the national economy, which in turn will be affected by the world situation.

"Since these uncertainties have continued into the second quarter of 2003, the prospect for economic recovery and job growth in New York this year is diminishing," he wrote.

Total employment in 2001 and 2002 dropped by 2.3 percent, to 8.4 million, according to the report.

New York City experienced half the overall losses, with jobs falling by 148,600. "Although there were hopes for an improved economy that might have led to job gains in 2002, the national and state economics continued to be weak and jobs declined even further, so that the rate of decline in 2002 exceeded that of 2001," he said in the report.

Big Apple private-sector employment between 2000 and 2002 dropped by 4.7 percent, compared with a 3 percent drop in the state as a whole. Total employment in the city declined to 3.6 million, a 4 percent drop, compared to a 2.3 percent drop statewide, according to the report.

But there was some good news.

The rate of job losses statewide has slowed recently, and did not erase the major gains seen during the 1992-2000 economic boom.

In addition, the total loss of 293,000 jobs was only about half of those seen during the 1989-92 recession in New York.

And while upstate and the city struggled in recent years, suburban areas generally did better, and job gains were posted in the professional and business services and by education and health care.

Stephen Kagann, an economist for Gov. Pataki, said the Hevesi reports "reaffirms what we have been saying about the impact of Sept. 11 and the national economic downturn."

He said the 2003 numbers already show "substantial improvement and a positive trend."

LAYOFFS SLOWING, BUT SO IS HIRING

4/10/2003 9:36:37 AM
By Rex Nutting
9:36 AM ET Apr 10, 2003

WASHINGTON (CBS.MW) -- Layoffs are slowing, but unemployed workers are still finding it hard to line up new jobs, U.S. government data shows. The average number of workers filing for state unemployment benefits each week over the past four weeks fell by 3,750 in the week ended April 5 to 419,500, the Labor Department said Thursday. Read the full release.

It's marked the lowest four-week average for initial claims in a month. The number of first-time claims fell by 38,000 to 405,000 in the latest week, nearly erasing the increase of 41,000 seen in the previous week. The four-week moving average is a better gauge of the labor market, economists say, because it smoothes out one-time events such as holidays and weather that add volatility to the weekly
comparisons.

The average number of workers receiving state benefits over the four weeks ended March 29 increased by 10,750 to 3.513 million, the most since late November. The figures do not include about 800,000 people who are receiving extended federal unemployment benefits that kick in once they've exhausted their state benefits, typically after 26 weeks.

The percentage of claimants who have exhausted their state benefits was 43 percent -- a three-decade high -- at the end of February.

Trouble sign?

The four-week average for new claims seems to have found a new equilibrium in the past month at around 420,000, up from about 390,000 in the first two months of the year.

A sustained surge in layoffs above 450,000 a week could be taken as a sign of new distress in the economy. Robust job growth probably can't resume until layoffs fall to about 350,000 a week, economists say.

The insured unemployment rate -- the percentage of the 126.9 million covered workers who are receiving benefits -- fell to 2.7 percent from 2.8 percent.

The government also revised its data for the past year to include new seasonal adjustment factors.

Also, the Labor Department said import prices rose 0.5 percent in March, despite a 1.8 percent drop in imported petroleum prices. Excluding petroleum, import prices surged 0.9 percent, the highest jump since the government began tracking the data in 1988.

Prices of industrial supplies jumped 5 percent, including a 41.6 percent increase in natural gas.

NYC loses fewer jobs in 02 but still in recession
Reuters, 04.03.03, 5:22 PM ET


NEW YORK, April 3 (Reuters) - New York City lost 56,100 jobs in 2002, about one-third less than it did the previous year, a sign
that although its economy remained in a recession, it was less severe, the state comptroller said on Thursday.

The latest downturn in the financial industry, which is key to the city's economy, has been worse than the one that followed the 1987
stock market crash, according to Comptroller Alan Hevesi. In 2002, financial powerhouses cut bonuses by $250 million when
compared to 2000. In contrast, 1989 bonuses were down $14 million from the 1987 level.

For the first time since 1991, total wages paid in New York City likely fell in 2002, Hevesi added in a statement. Data were only
available for the first six months of the year.

"The recession has affected incomes more than jobs, so tax revenues have been hurt more than in previous economic declines," he added. Total wages fell 8.9 percent in the first half of the year compared to the year-ago period.

The stock market's swoon in 2002 -- the third one in a row -- also smashed capital gains tax collections. The city got $650 million
less from this tax when compared to 2000, a 65 percent drop, the former city comptroller said.

And lower Wall Street-related income sliced the city's personal income tax revenues by almost $1 billion over two years.

Since New York City's economy peaked in January 2001, the city has lost 206,500 jobs, a staggering amount equal to 40 percent of the jobs gained during the city's expansion in the late 1990s.

About one-third of these job losses preceded the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. And about one-third of these jobs
were lost in the month after the attacks, which killed nearly 3,000.

I'm confused

For the first time since writing gthis column in August 2001, I'm not sure of what to say about the New York area technology labor market. So, I think what I'll do is lay out what is confusing me.

On the one hand, I'm seeing a pickup in hiring going on. Staff level positions are starting to show up somewhat regularly again and my colleagues and I are filling them. To me, that is extremely good news because 6-9 months ago, firms were still reluctant to use recruiters and kept thinking that job boards offered the answer to low cost hiring.

On the other hand, I did a poll in my Yahoogroup, and asked how long the members have been out of work. It appears that layoffs are still going on so that the large wave of terminations is continuing. In addition, I read an article that pointed out the salaries on Wall Street were down 9% from last year (on top of previous reductions the preceding year). I'm not seeing project management or departmental positions with any regularity. From the poll, I could also see that a large percentage of people were still unemployed for more than 6 months (and for more than a year).

It looks like a bottom and the beginning of slow growth.

What are you seeing? What do you think? Email me at jeffaltman@cisny.com.