California Leads the Nation in High Tech Job Growth (Sacramento: tech jobs, contractor)

[18Montclair]

Grain of Salt folks, but good news is good news.

[LEFT]California had a total of 993,000 tech jobs in 2008, making an average wage of $105,500

Read more: California leads nation in high-tech job growth - Sacramento Business Journal:
[/LEFT]

[hoffdano]

I'm happy to see that - since I work in those fields. But I wonder if jobs were added in 2009. That data was for 2008. Did 2009 add or subtract jobs?

[hsw]

Difficult stat to interpret

BigTech is prob most clever industry in continually shifting lower-skill jobs into contractor mode, to avoid heavy, fixed costs of healthcare benefits, etc...and avoiding older workers with high pay/benefits by seniority despite less relevant skills/productivity

Start-up tech has always been more stock-intensive pay with lighter cash pay

Ironically, tech is the industry whose own innovations have made possible easily shifting lower-skill, lower-pay workers into telecommute mode, into cheaper locales like TX or Bangalore....and just automating away lower-skill support work

Shareholders demand cos. maximize profits to maximize share price...more jobs don't correlate well with productivity or wealth creation in a tech-intensive era

[mateo45]

Originally Posted by hsw

Difficult stat to interpret

BigTech is prob most clever industry in continually shifting lower-skill jobs into contractor mode, to avoid heavy, fixed costs of healthcare benefits, etc...and avoiding older workers with high pay/benefits by seniority despite less relevant skills/productivity

Start-up tech has always been more stock-intensive pay with lighter cash pay

Ironically, tech is the industry whose own innovations have made possible easily shifting lower-skill, lower-pay workers into telecommute mode, into cheaper locales like TX or Bangalore....and just automating away lower-skill support work

Shareholders demand cos. maximize profits to maximize share price...more jobs don't correlate well with productivity or wealth creation in a tech-intensive era

I think it depends on what the "tech" is. Infinitely "portable" technologies like media and information, continue to lower costs and raise "productivity". While more "durable" examples, like aerospace and "green" technologies still manage to return both "value" and jobs.

[Charles]

That article was reporting 2008 data. That's 500 million years ago. Also, the article implied that California will be hit the hardest as 250,000 tech jobs were lost in 2009.

In contrast Huntsville, with a metro population of around 350K, is getting 10,000 high tech jobs due to Base Realignment and Closure. The unemployment rate for engineers with degrees in Huntsville is 0.2% (that's 2 out of 1000).

General: 10,000 jobs following BRAC 'a conservative' number | Breaking News from The Huntsville Times - al.com - al.com