It was a fullish moon when I picked up a new book called "The Lights in the Tunnel," thinking that the title was sure to lift my spirits on All Souls Day.
Perhaps I should have picked me up some Dostoyevsky.
It's not that "The Lights in the Tunnel" isn't thoughtful or interesting. The author, Martin Ford, is a computer engineer who has clearly spent many hours considering the true effects of technology on society.
It's just that a rough summation of those effects might be described as "really bloody terrible."
Essentially, he believes that technology is the direct cause of job losses that will never return. In fact, his fear is that even in those industries that are currently still labor intensive, job losses are inevitable. Which just might mean that there will be vast numbers of people all over the world who will have no money to spend at Zara. Not even at Old Navy.
Naturally, Ford has found himself in a spirited debate with economists who seem to think his arguments border on loonism.
A chap named Robin Hanson seems rather hurt that Ford isn't in the thrall of economists' thinking--you know, the optimistic stuff about how technology will always produce more jobs and more wealth because we humans are, well, so clever.
Perhaps I paraphrase a touch, but economists such as Hanson tend to believe that economic inequality might be a politically difficult thing, but it doesn't portend economic disaster: because, as Hanson says, "producers can focus on giving the rich what they want, and innovation and growth is just as feasible for elite products as for mass products."
(Credit:
CC Firepile/Flickr)
Now of course, I'm not going to argue with economists about human behavior because it's generally akin to arguing with a hockey color commentator about creme caramel.
However, Ford, the techie whom economists dismiss, has a very interesting solution to his rather bleak human scenario. He seems rather keen on a consumption tax, or a direct tax on business that would attempt to capture the income that people would have earned if they had had a job. Then he would incentivize the unemployed to contribute to society according to their own talents and society's needs.
You need a strong heart and stomach to read Ford's book, but some small part of me cannot help but wonder whether his rather miserable prognostication might have some truth to it.
"Glenn Beck would scream," Ford told me in an e-mail. Which made me immediately wonder why his publishers hadn't put that quote on the book cover.
Strangely, Ford isn't some sandal-wearing socialist wagging his finger at the money lenders.
"Capitalism has worked out fairly well for me, and I'd like to keep it around. If the ideas in the book are correct, then I really wonder if the system will be sustainable without some type of intervention," he told me.
Here is a computer engineer who's genuinely worried about, well, human beings.
"If that underclass increases relentlessly over time, and if you start seeing more educated people getting dragged into it, then we are going to have a huge problem. I think that may happen as machines and computers keep getting better until eventually they can do the jobs of even people with lots of education and training. At that point I think you have to do something," he added.
Unfortunately, the history of the world doesn't necessarily offer too much hope for the implementation of the kind of intervention that Ford is suggesting.
So one day, you, me, Ben Affleck, Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, and Liv Tyler might be seated in a devastated landscape muttering: "How were we to know we were supposed to listen to bloody Martin Ford? He was just some computer engineer."
LaidOffCamp, held during daylight hours this week at the Temple night club in downtown San Francisco, brought together more than 600 unemployed and self-employed people seeking to share ideas about finding work amid the recession.
Volunteers, speakers, and sponsors came together to plug networking, information exchange, social media, and interconnected community as ways to find support and, hopefully, an income. Among the crowd, there were also entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and recruiters.
Another 16 such events are preliminarily scheduled across the nation, with the next one set for Friday in Dallas. But, not surprisingly, San Francisco was the first to play host to this unemployment un-conference.
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.
- prev
- 1
- next
