Correction, 12:11 p.m. PST: This story inadvertently gave an incorrect number for the tech job postings at Dice.com in February 2008. The actual number for that month was 94,423. The percentages that stem from that number also have been corrected.
Jobs posted on technology jobs site Dice.com rose 3.1 percent in February, its first sequential increase since late last summer, just before the economy started to really turn sour in September.
Tech job listings rose to 57,337 as of February 2, up from 55,609 in January, according to the company's monthly report released Wednesday. But if you're looking for full-time work with health benefits, you may not find the new data to be especially good news: Helping to drive that modest increase was a 7.3 percent gain in the number of contractor positions, which climbed to 23,955 listings as of February 2, from 22,333 a month earlier, according to the report.
"In uncertain times, companies are looking for flexibility in their payrolls to continue with critical projects," said Tom Silver, chief marketing officer for Dice Holdings, which operates Dice.com. Those critical projects often involve improvements to a company's infrastructure and can offer near-term benefits, he added.
Click chart to get a larger image.
(Credit: Dice.com)Last February, there were 94,423 positions posted on Dice.com, of which 39.1 percent were for contractors. But this year, as the number of February job postings fell 39.3 percent year over year, contractor positions accounted for 41.8 percent of the job postings.
"For the last year or so, contractor jobs have accounted for 38 to 40 percent of the positions, but I expect that increase," Silver said. He noted he wouldn't be surprised if the percentage for contractor job postings eventually reached to 50 percent later this year.
There was a similar trend after the Internet bubble burst in early 2000, when the number tech jobs overall shrank but the slice of contractor positions soared to roughly half of all job postings on Dice by mid-2003.
In the past, contractor jobs have also served as a leading indicator to the overall labor market, said Amar Mann, a regional economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"In previous slowdowns, the first workers who were cut were temporary workers or contractors," Mann said. "They are cut anywhere from three to 12 months ahead of a slowdown, and this could be seen as a leading indicator to job losses."
On the positive side, the figures can also indicate when permanent jobs may begin to pick up, Mann added. When the dot-com bust hit in 2001, for example, the number of contractor positions began to shrink. They began to pick up steam in the following year and posted year-over year growth in July 2003. Then four months later, the overall economy began to improve and job growth began in November. That followed a similar pattern in the 1991 recession, Mann said, pointing to a rise in the number of temporary and contract workers in January 1992, with job growth following three months later, Mann noted.
Help wanted: Techies with Android skills
Temporary-placement agency Manpower, meanwhile, finds some tech positions are still in demand, particularly for people skilled in mobile technologies. The problem is a surprisingly thin talent pool for those jobs. Adam Shandrow, area manager for Manpower, said there's a shortage in finding tech workers who are familiar with Google's Android smartphone platform and applications that can run on it.
"We still see a slight demand for high-tech engineering jobs, but the timing of placing candidates in those jobs is now very different," Shandow added. "Before, we could fill a job in three to four weeks, now it takes five to six weeks. And for a permanent position, it used to take a month to fill a high-tech job and now it takes almost two months."
Employers are also issuing a more extensive wish list in what they seek in a high-tech contractor, Shandrow added. In the past, a prospective employer would seek three or four primary skill sets when submitting an order to hire a contractor. Now employers want additional skills for the same level of pay, as well as stipulations relating to the length of the contract, number of hours to be worked and money to be paid, he said.
Although the overall unemployment rate reached 7.6 percent in January and for tech, the rate climbed to 4.8 percent, there are still opportunities for tech employment.
"Overall, tech is still an attractive place to be, even though the number of job listings are down roughly 40 percent," because there are still over 57,000 positions that need to be filled, Silver said.
Correction, 12:50 p.m. PST: This story initially mischaracterized a statement made by John Challenger regarding the severity of recent tech-related job cuts. He does not expect them to be as severe as those during the dot-com bust. Also the percentage figures cited within the various sectors reflect the increase in layoffs last year compared with 2007, and not the percentage of jobs cut.
Job cuts in the tech sector increased 74.2 percent in 2008 compared with the previous year, as the industry was battered by an unrelenting wave of layoffs, according to a report released Thursday.
Last year, 186,955 jobs in the telecommunications, computer, and electronics sectors were slashed, according to the report by outplacement consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
And the bulk of those cuts, nearly three-quarters, came during the last six months of the year, the report noted. That drove the tech sector to unemployment levels not seen since 2003, according to the report.
"Through the first half of 2008, it looked as though the tech sector might be one of the few areas of the economy to remain resistant to recessionary pressures. However, the economy's continued slide here and overseas saw consumer and corporate demand for technology products and services drop rapidly, and these firms were suddenly under pressure to make significant cost-cutting moves," John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in statement.
AT&T, for example, announced 12,000 job cuts last year, while Sun Microsystems unveiled plans to cut 6,000 positions, and Xerox 3,000 jobs.
Within the various sectors in tech, electronics firms saw losses of 73,447 jobs, an increase of 89.7 percent over the previous year; the telecommunications industry saw an increase of 72.5 percent; and cuts in the computer industry were up 61.3 percent.
And in the Silicon Valley, for just the month of December, the unemployment rate rose to 7.7 percent in Santa Clara County and 5.9 percent in San Mateo County. Nationwide, the unemployment rate reached 7.2 percent for the month of December.
And the forecast for 2009 is not looking much better.
"Cuts could reach even higher in 2009, as there is no evidence yet that the economy has hit the bottom of this downward portion of the cycle. We almost certainly will not see a repeat of the 2008 first quarter, in which tech cuts totaled just 17,345," Challenger said in a statement.
He added, however, he does not expect technology-related job cuts to be as severe as the dot-com bust, when 36 percent of all layoffs across a wide swath of industries came from tech.
In recent months, financial analysts have expressed concern that Google's financial results could be hurt by foreign-exchange rate changes. But Google said Thursday that it has taken measures to insulate itself from the potential problem.
Specifically, Google has invested about $80 million in hedging programs that counteract currency swings, Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said on a conference call to discuss Google's third-quarter financial results. The foreign-exchange issue that currently afflicts Google is that the dollar is growing stronger relative to other currencies right now, which effectively devalues revenue from other countries.
The hedging programs "should be viewed as an insurance policy," Pichette said.
Google has hedging programs for the euro, the Canadian dollar, and the U.K. pound, and plans to extend the program to other foreign currencies, he said.
"Our hedging programs are working well," Pichette said.
In the third quarter, 51 percent of Google revenue came from outside the United States, Google said.
The U.S. Senate on Tuesday afternoon passed the Webcaster Settlement Act, the legislation that lays the groundwork for Web radio stations to negotiate reduced royalty rates for the songs they stream over the Web.
The bill passed through the House of Representatives on Saturday and is now headed to the White House, where President Bush is expected to sign it.
"I'm relieved, optimistic, and grateful to our listeners," said Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, a Web radio station and music-suggestion engine.
Webcasters have long complained that the royalty rate to stream music is too high for Web radio stations to generate any profit. Representatives from Internet radio and the music industry have been in negotiations for more than a year. Recently, the two sides have gotten closer to an agreement and both say they are confident a deal is within reach.
The deal needs the blessing of Congress because the parties seek a statutory license. Under such a license, any Web station is allowed to play songs that fall under the license without seeking permission. In return, Webcasters are required to pay the negotiated rate.
Westergren, who emerged as a de facto spokesman for the bill, said that had it not made it through Congress, a long delay would have ensued before an agreement could be reached, a situation he says would have driven some Web stations out of business. That's why Webcasters and representatives from the music sector, including representatives of the Recording Industry Association of America, teamed up to get the bill passed.
Believe it or not, the RIAA was in there fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Pandora and the Web radio stations to fend off any threats to the legislation.
The most imposing obstacle came from traditional broadcasters, who lobbied hard the past weekend to snuff the bill for reasons that are still unclear. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), who has a history of voting for pro-copyright-holder issues, helped mediate a settlement with the National Association of Broadcasters, and the group dropped its opposition.
"This is a welcome and encouraging development and a sign of the constructive working relationship between the music industry and Webcasters," said Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA's chairman and CEO. "Together, we want to make this marketplace work for both music fans and music creators."
It's important to note that the bill doesn't guarantee a settlement between the Webcasters and music industry. They now have until February 15 to reach an agreement.
See Kara Tsuboi's interview on Monday with Westergren, in which he explains why he's fighting to save Web radio.
After 10 straight quarters of grabbing a favorable foreign-exchange rate, Google's luck is expected to hit a bump in the third quarter, according to a report Monday by a Wall Street analyst.
The search giant, which relies on more than half of its gross revenues coming from overseas operations, is expected to take a sequential $22 million hit to its third-quarter gross revenue, due to unfavorable exchange rates, according to a report by Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal.
As a result, Google's anticipated international gross revenue is expected to come in at $3.03 billion for the third quarter, verses $3.25 billion had the exchange rates stayed the same.
Over the past 10 quarters, Google has enjoyed a favorable exchange rate, as the local currency in many of the countries that it operates has shown strength against the dollar. But as the dollar has grown relatively stronger in the quarter, especially against the yen in Japan, Google has seen its favorable exchange rate evaporate.
Nonetheless, Aggarwal notes in his report:
Though Google will not have currency benefits in Q3 and U.S. growth is moderating, our view is that Google will be able to meet the Street's expectations due to the combination of healthy CPC (cost per click) improvement and international strength.
Google is expected to post worldwide gross revenue of nearly $5.77 billion in the third quarter, up from $4.83 billion a year ago and an increase from $5.37 billion in the previous quarter.
Google's third quarter ends September 30.
The Olympic Games in Beijing is proving to be a hit in the workplace.
Traffic to Olympics-related Web sites soared Monday, the first full workday after the official opening of the games Friday, according to numbers released Wednesday by Nielsen Online (see chart below). More than 2 million people visited the video section of NBCOlympics.com, up nearly 140 percent from Sunday when the site had about 858,000 visitors, according to Nielsen. Overall visits to the site increased 40 percent to 4.6 million compared with Sunday's 3.3 million.
Traffic to Yahoo's Olympics site also skyrocketed, up 86 percent to 5.2 million visitors compared with Sunday's 2.8 million.
(Credit:
Nielsen Online)
Mobile usage also saw a significant boost, increasing from 210,000 on Friday to 476,062 on Monday. NBC, which said it polled users, said it was "stunned" at the number of users who were using mobile video download for the first time.
Meanwhile, Nielsen Media Research reported that NBC's TV coverage averaged more than 30 million viewers for the first three days of the games, a 26 percent increase compared with the same period during the Athens Games in 2004. The opening ceremony was last week's most-watched program, attracting nearly 35 million viewers.
As well as NBC is doing both on TV and on online, it begs the question of whether NBC's policy of delaying popular events online until they have run on TV in prime time was a wise move or overly restrictive.
Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.
Remember TiVo's reporting of Janet Jackson at the 2004 Super Bowl, when thousands of people replayed her "wardrobe malfunction" over and over on their digital video recorder?
Years later, major advertisers are even more rapt about people's TiVo behavior, particularly as it pertains to the commercials they watch.
Starcom USA, a Chicago advertising agency with such clients as Walt Disney, Coke and Kraft, has teamed with TiVo to be the first to use its so-called PowerWatch Ratings Service, a Nielsen Ratings-like service that reports--based on input from a panel--which television shows and ads people fast-forward, watch, and time-shift (which means to record and watch later). TiVo reported the first findings of the new ratings system on Tuesday.
"A lot people in this industry have speculated that older people don't fast-forward through programming as much because they're not tech savvy, or they believe early adopters are uber TiVo users and never watch live TV or commercials," said Todd Juenger, TiVo's vice president and general manager of audience research and measurement, who helped get the ratings group started two years ago.
"What this data shows is that none of that is true. People are fast-forwarding and time-shifting on an overall basis in the same amounts. But what they time-shift is really different," he said. (He did not break out numbers on how much content people time-shift or fast-forward.)
For example, in a somewhat obvious finding, households with children under the age of 12 are much more likely to watch time-shifted commercials about children's skincare products, toys and computer games, than those households with adults over 50.
In contrast, households with adults over 50 are more likely to watch time-shifted commercials about political parties, collectibles and art, hair restoration products, and foreign travel, according to data TiVo collected on roughly 15,000 volunteer households in May.
The takeaway? People are still watching commercials if they're relevant to them.
For its part, TiVo is trying to build up its new TV analytics and ratings services to compete with established players like Nielsen. Its products include StopWatch, a tracking service that lets advertisers and television networks see which shows and commercials people are actively fast-forwarding and watching on a time-shifted basis, down to the second. To collect that data, TiVo tracks anonymous click streams from a random sample of about 20,000 people of its 3.8 million subscribers on a nightly basis, according to Juenger. (It can do this in accordance with the TiVo privacy policy, he said.)
In contrast, TiVo produces PowerWatch data from a volunteer panel that have agreed to attach their demographic and geographic details to their behaviors. When it launched last year, its panel size was double that of Nielsen's, according to Juenger. (Nielson has since bumped up the size of its panel.) Since last year, TiVo has attracted big advertising and television network clients, including Starcom, NBC and CBS, parent company of CNET News.
TiVo's come a long ways since the Janet Jackson incident, when many of its members charged the company with violating their privacy by tracking them. The 11-year-old company has been careful to disclose its monitoring since then.
"The people who invented TiVo always anticipated bringing back viewership data from the box and using it," Juenger said "Only a few years ago did it get into that."
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