Weekend Question 4: Why Is This Story on the Tech Job Situations So Invisible?

Answer: Because it might make people think the tech sector is in good shape and outsourcing isn’t ruining it.
As far as our business press is concerned, we can’t have that.

I deliberately sat on this story from Wednesday to see if it received any coverage beyond its original location at Information Week. It hasn’t.

Here is an excerpt from an article with nearly unbridled enthusiasm:

Tech Worker Surveys Show Happy Days Are Here Again
Salaries are rising, jobs are secure, personal finances are solid, and skills in Web services, ERP, .Net, and Java are as hot as the weather outside.

Aug 2, 2006 03:00 PM

Tech professionals are more confident about their jobs right now than workers in other segments, according to two new reports.

Technology workers were more optimistic in July than they’ve been at any other time this year, according to Hudson, a professional staffing and outsourcing services firm which conducts monthly phone surveys of 9,000 workers in several industries, including more than 400 IT and telecom workers.

Compared to a base score of 100, job optimism among techies climbed 4.3 points to 112.5 in July. Tech pros were also more upbeat in July than the same month a year ago, which saw a confidence rating of 109.9.

Workers nationwide across all industries aren’t as buoyant. Overall, their confidence levels fell slightly last month—1/2 point—to 101.9, according to Hudson.

“It’s hot out there right now for tech pros,” says Kevin Knaul a Hudson VP. Fueling the confidence of tech pros is heavy demand by employers. “There is definitely more demand than supply right now,” he says. “It’s a struggle to keep up,” he says.

Especially hot are those with skills in Web services, .Net, Java and ERP. “All the major ERP vendors are updating their products this year,” driving the need for those pros, says Knaul.

Boosting tech worker confidence was optimism about personal finances—despite rising summer fuel costs—as well as a high level of job satisfaction. The number of employees who rated their finances as excellent or good rose 4 points in July to 56%. There was also a 7 point increase to 49% in the number of workers who indicated their financial situation was improving. Seventy four percent of tech workers said they were happy with their jobs in July, up from 71% in June.

Wait, I thought US tech jobs were disappearing. Here’s yet another one of Dr. Sanity’s “Command Hallucinations” to add to the false meme list.

In fact, this CNN Money item from November of last year (header and URL indicate that it originally appeared in November, even though the byline date is January 27), and this BizzyBlog post about venture capital from March, show that the tech sector has a hotbed of economic activity and entrepreneurship for over a year (the November 2005 CNN Money item says that things “….. began changing about six months ago.”).

A months-long stretch of stories like these not only would not have been ignored in the mid-late 1990s; they also would have, and often did, break out of the business pages and into the front pages and the evening news. But now? Forget it. If you can’t figure out why the press downplays and ignores stories like these, the good Doctor Sanity has the answer: “….. They might have to admit there is a Bush Boom, and that is simply not possible in their worldview.”

As to workers in the rest of the economy, their reading is a bit above 100, meaning that they’re slightly optimistic on the whole. That is amazing considering the steady drumbeat of economic gloom and doom The Associated Press, Reuters, and others persist in peddling.