WASHINGTON-A new report funded by the Communications Workers of America shows U.S. high-technology workers still face chronic unemployment and a serious jobs deficit despite an economic recovery being declared three years ago.
The report, titled “America’s High-Tech Bust” and conducted by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois (Chicago), found the U.S. high-tech economy continued to lose 200,000 jobs after the recession was declared over in November 2001 by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
CWA claimed it is the first time a report has tried to tackle the impact of the economic bust for high-tech workers at a national level. The study focussed on employment trends in information technology companies only.
“Most of the time the focus is on the month-to-month unemployment and job creation numbers. This report provides a three-year look at what those monthly statistics have meant for high-tech workers and their families,” said Snigdha Srivastava, researcher at the UIC Center for Urban Economic Development.
High-tech workers, according to the study, have seen a doubling of unemployment rates during the past three years. The findings indicate that nearly every labor market mirrored the Silicon Valley’s dismal experience, with the nation’s capital the only market to show positive job growth in the past year.
The report cited offshore outsourcing as contributing to the lack of strong job creation in this sector.
Some experts, however, argue the impact of offshore outsourcing is exaggerated and actually benefits American consumers and businesses in the long run.
“It is stunning to think that in every region of the country, we have fewer high-tech jobs today than we did three years ago. We must focus on exporting our products instead of our jobs to turn this critical situation around,” said Marcus Courtney, president of WashTech, a CWA unit in Washington state.
Courtney acknowledged the tech labor decline is partly due to the dot-com bust of 2000 and the overall restructuring of the workplace due to automation, but he said changes in tax code and trade agreements would go a long way to reinvigorating the tech labor market.
Courtney said Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has shown more leadership than President Bush on the tech-labor front. CWA is a stalwart Democratic donor.
Industry has a slightly different view of the tech labor market.
Earlier this month, the Information Technology Association of America said its telephone survey of 500 hiring managers of IT- and non-IT companies nationwide found the overall size of the IT workforce grew from approximately 10.3 million to 10.5 million jobs from early 2003 to early 2004.
But ITAA added that demand for technology workers continues to drop, with hiring managers indicating they will seek to fill about 270,000 fewer jobs during 2004 than they did during 2003.
