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The employment landscape for technical jobs does not seem to have come even close to hitting bottom. This report from CNET indicates that lay offs in the tech sector will hit a 3 year high.
As the report states:
During the first half of the year, 51,529 planned job cuts were announced across the tech sector, representing a 260 percent increase over the 14,308 layoffs planned during the first half of 2011. Things are so bad so far this year that the figure is 39 percent higher than all the job cuts recorded in the tech sector last year.
Hewlett-Packard proved to be the major force behind this year's uptick in planned layoffs, after the company announced in May that it would cut 30,000 jobs. Those layoffs will be completed by the end of fiscal 2014, and shave off 8 percent of HP's entire workforce.
It was also a tough beginning of the year for Sony and Nokia, both of which said they would lay off 10,000 employees. Panasonic and Olympus are also eyeing layoffs to make their operations more nimble.
About 60% of these cuts were due to the massive job lay offs anticipated by HP which has been unable to turn around their PC centric business model to the ever growing tablet and smartphone market that has taken the world by storm. To me this makes the case of adopting more agility and project leadership into your repertoire of transferable skillsets if you are in the IT/Tech sector as I'm sure many on this site are. HP itself could have been more agile and leading more profitable and innovative projects as well!
More troubling is this graph generated from the US Dept of Labor Statistics for jobs related to "information services" the majority of which were IT services:
This was generated based on the aggregate data of the last two decades starting from June of 1992 to June of 2012. The graph highlights the peak hit during the late 90s and early 2000 during the dot com rush and reveals the continuous downward trend to near 1992 levels!
Sorry to be so doom and gloom, but if like me you are in the IT/Tech sector, then its time to assess your talents, practices and skillsets and think how you will adapt, be agile and lead projects of the future. I know I will!
During the first half of the year, 51,529 planned job cuts were announced across the tech sector, representing a 260 percent increase over the 14,308 layoffs planned during the first half of 2011. Things are so bad so far this year that the figure is 39 percent higher than all the job cuts recorded in the tech sector last year.
Hewlett-Packard proved to be the major force behind this year's uptick in planned layoffs, after the company announced in May that it would cut 30,000 jobs. Those layoffs will be completed by the end of fiscal 2014, and shave off 8 percent of HP's entire workforce.
It was also a tough beginning of the year for Sony and Nokia, both of which said they would lay off 10,000 employees. Panasonic and Olympus are also eyeing layoffs to make their operations more nimble.
Posted on: July 23, 2012 11:06 PM |
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