The Kiss of Death (Preliminary)

Infoworld.com and Dice.com are running a piece about the low unemployment rates in Computer-related occupations (also loosely ill-defined as “Tech” and “IT”).  The open-borders lobby will surely use these reports to continue dumping foreign labor into these occupations.

The data they are using is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) by subscription only.  I happen to be on that subscription list.  There is a clear warning in the BLS instructions stating:

“Occupation data for unemployed persons refer to the experienced unemployed only, classified according to the occupation of their last job.”

Observing this constraint from the BLS instructions, we can see that the data does not include recent graduates, persons who could do the job, but were not employed in the occupation as their last job and those who have become discouraged and quit looking for work in the occupation. We can get an idea as to how many “experienced” workers are regaining employment during this hiring spree from the data.

Employment and Unemployment Loss/Gain in Computer Related Occupations Q4 2011 to Q4 2012
	Growth Loss
	Employed	Unemployed
Computer and information research scientists	-2,000	NA
Computer systems analysts	52,000	5,000
Information security analysts	14,000	NA
Computer programmers	-1,000	5,000
Software developers, applications and systems software	162,000	-12,000
Web developers	3,000	-1,000
Computer support specialists	38,000	-5,000
Database administrators	9,000	1,000
Network and computer systems administrators	13,000	-3,000
Computer network architects	35,000	2,000
Computer occupations, all other	7,000	-5,000
Employment Growth vs Experienced Professionals re-employed	330,000	-13,000	-3.94%

From the table above, we see that employment levels rose by 330,000 and unemployment levels declined by 13,000.  With these figures in mind, we see that only 3.94% of the employment growth came from the “experienced unemployed”. 

Even in the occupation, “Software developers, applications and system software” we only see a decrease of 12,000 out of  46,000 experienced unemployed, even with growth of 162,000 jobs.  In fact, only 7.41% of 162,000 jobs went to unemployed persons with experience in the occupation as their last job.
Note: The BLS recommends that this CPS (Current Population Survey) data be averaged or smoothed over four Quarters. Perhaps I’ll revisit this report with smoothed data at a future date.
DATA Tables used in this blog entry:
Quarter 4, 2011

Table 3. Employed and experienced unemployed persons by detailed occupation and class of worker, Quarter IV 2011 (Source: Current Population Survey)
	Employed	Unemployed
Computer and information research scientists	28,000	3,000
Computer systems analysts	445,000	12,000
Information security analysts	51,000	NA
Computer programmers	462,000	17,000
Software developers, applications and systems software	998,000	46,000
Web developers	199,000	8,000
Computer support specialists	443,000	30,000
Database administrators	112,000	1,000
Network and computer systems administrators	211,000	13,000
Computer network architects	92,000	0
Computer occupations, all other	334,000	14,000

Quarter 4, 2012

Table 3. Employed and experienced unemployed persons by detailed occupation and class of worker, Quarter IV 2012 (Source: Current Population Survey)
	Employed	Unemployed
Computer and information research scientists	26,000	NA
Computer systems analysts	497,000	17,000
Information security analysts	65,000	2,000
Computer programmers	461,000	22,000
Software developers, applications and systems software	1,160,000	34,000
Web developers	202,000	7,000
Computer support specialists	481,000	25,000
Database administrators	121,000	2,000
Network and computer systems administrators	224,000	10,000
Computer network architects	127,000	2,000
Computer occupations, all other	341,000	9,000