In
the first six months of the year, 30,200 technology jobs were added to the
economy, according to a report by industry trade group TechAmerica. The trade
organization looked at data provided by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau
of Labor Statistics.
The
main areas adding jobs include software services (14,200), technology services
(29,700) and technology manufacturers (9,100). These jobs were added between
January and June of 2010. Official sentiments from TechAmerica executives are
simultaneously optimistic and cautious. Job numbers in technology are still
down compared with the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009, but recovery in key
areas is a positive sign, notes the trade group.
"Though
the tech industry was among the last to feel the effects of the economic
downturn of 2008-2009, it was not immune to job loss and is only slowly showing
signs of climbing out of it," said Josh James, vice president, research,
for TechAmerica Foundation in a statement. "Tech employment, as of
June 2010, stood at 5.78 million, compared with 5.99 million in January 2009.
So there is still a way to go before we've made up for lost jobs, and continued
recovery is by no means certain. With job growth in three of the four tech
sectors, we remain guardedly optimistic."
One
area that has shed jobs in 2010 is telecommunications, which saw a loss of
22,800 jobs. Year over year, technology jobs saw a 1.2 percent decline, losing
72,800 jobs.
"We
have weathered the storm better than most," said TechAmerica president and
CEO Phil Bond in a statement. "From its
position embedded in every other industry, technology remains the best hope for
driving robust recovery across the economy. America can only realize the
full promise of an innovation recovery with smarter public policies focused on
developing and attracting the best talent, investing in research and
development, and growing and securing our information infrastructure."
The
question remains, however, whether companies will be driving the growth of high
technology jobs in this country or will they be doing so
abroad?
Many of the major technology corporations, such as IBM, HP, Microsoft and
Cisco, have burgeoning research and development facilities abroad and are
hiring local talent in other parts of the world, including in Asia, South and
Central America, Canada and Eastern Europe.
There
is little denying that much of the growth for U.S. multinational companies
is abroad, and the jobs are expanding in these locales.
"While
cost savings are the strongest motivation [for moving R&D offshore],
companies are also going abroad to tap global talent pools and to be closer to
growth markets," wrote Vivek Wadhwah, senior research associate at the
Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School in a 2009 article for Bloomberg
BusinessWeek. "Some of the biggest U.S. companies now get most
of their revenue from abroad. Hewlett-Packard gets 69% of its revenue from
outside the U.S., and Caterpillar gets
67%. IBM gets 63%, while Intel and Pfizer each generate
57% of sales from foreign markets."
With
recent changes to H-1B visa fees and measures in such states
as Ohio that ban the use of
offshore outsourcing services, there is a protectionist sentiment in the air that aims
to help U.S. workers—but could keep business growth in the developing world
from expanding to U.S. shores.
"There's
been this assumption that there's a global hierarchy of work, that all the
high-end service work, knowledge work, R&D work would stay in U.S., and
that all the lower end work would be transferred to emerging markets," noted
Hal Salzman, a public policy professor at Rutgers and a senior faculty fellow
at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. "That hierarchy has been
upset, to say the least. More and more of the innovation is coming out of the
emerging markets, as part of this bottom-up push."
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