This morning, The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported July’s unemployment numbers. Total non-farm payroll employment rose by 163,000 in July for an unemployment rate uptick to 8.3%, and the civilian labor force participation rate stands at 63.7%. The jobs gain is better than June’s revised growth estimate — a gain of a meager 64,000 jobs. However, the improvement is not enough to keep the jobless rate from increasing from June’s 8.2%. So how do tech jobs fit into this picture? Scroll your cursor over a line or a city name in the following line graph below to see how each city performs.
Among all tech cities, the WaveLength Tech Jobs Index shown above shows that demand peaked in spring 2010, fell most of 2011, and has been largely flat the beginning of 2012. Turning to the table below, tech job demand has actually seen a slight uptick over the last 6 months, but nearly 17% decline since last fall. The Bay Area demand has held up relatively well posting an increase of 7.2% since February and only a decline of 3.9% since last fall. Washington, DC and San Diego are among the weaker performers. Washington, DC firms working with the Federal government clearly anticipate sequestration’s automatic budget cuts, and have cut hiring as a result.
Source: WaveLength Market Analytics, July 2012
Since we started collecting data in October 2009, there’s 55% average rise in tech job demand. While the Bay Area demand has grown the most, Austin, Denver, Raleigh-Durham, and Dallas have all posted healthy increases. Again, the laggards are San Diego and Washington, DC, which is starting to look like the federal government may not make it immune to downturns after all.
Methodology
The number of job postings for 6 tech job functions is collected every Wednesday using well-known job sites and then calculated into the index for each job function. The index series is designed to measure monthly changes using a smoothed 4-week average rolled up into an overall composite. The program includes coverage of 10 high tech cities since October 28, 2009. Updated monthly, it includes Austin, Atlanta, Bay Area, Boston, Dallas, Denver, San Diego, Seattle, Raleigh/Durham, and Washington DC. Feel free to visit http://www.wlanalytics.com.
© 2012 WaveLength Market Analytics LLC. All Rights Reserved.
