Which is a better job market- California Or New York?[Read More]

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We have crunched the job data for Decemeber of 2008 and the verdict is "Its Not Pretty".

Conventional wisdom dictates that job openings increase in the fourth quarter as companies are ready to make the actual hires come new year. But in 2008, there has been a drop in jobs in October, November and at best mixed in December. The silver lining is that the rate of reduction is slowing down and in some cases has even shown signs of a reversal. In other words, it didn't fall as badly. Does this mean that we have hit the rock bottom.. Only time will tell.

Our Market Statistics Compare tool lets you peek into the job data for 2007 and 2008. Do your own comparison and reach your own conclusion. Try it out.

Here are some excellent examples of how this data was used.

Vincent McBurney used it in his Blog "How to Kick Start your DataStage Career"

Eric Marcoux analyzed Java and Oracle statistics in his JEE, Oracle Fusion Middleware and High Education Weblog.

James Taylor analyzed whether Data Mining or Predictive Analysis as a phrase is being used more.

Frank Salinas compared Java and .Net

Timo Elliott posted "Which BI Product Skills Are Most Lucrative?"

Vaibhav Choudhary did an analysis of the Java market

Play with it and share with us your analysis, predictions and conclusions.

 

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OdinJobs, the largest IT job search engine, announces the release of the third quarter, 2008 Job Market Statistics, providing a comprehensive picture of the job market including historical comparison of the demand trends, median salary and salary distribution.

"The market statistics tool allow users to query our knowledge base of over 8 million jobs to determine salary distribution and job demand" says Naveen Bala, founder and president of OdinJobs.com. "Users can preform a what-if analysis using multiple skill combinations to see what is still in demand and what pays more".

"Salary tools in the market heavily depend on surveys and do not support what if analysis", says Bala. "Every working and job seeking professional need to use this tool to see if their skill combination is still hot in the market. This tool is also available as a downloadable and customizable widget that can be added to any website or blog".

Visit http://www.odinjobs.com/StaffIT/MarketStatistics to see the tool in action, or go to http://www.odinjobs.com/tools.html to customize this tool for your blog or website.

OdinJobs tracks the technology job market by monitoring thousands of corporate web sites, job boards and blogs. IT professionals, employers and recruiters can drill down on the basis of job roles (development, testing, management etc) or by popular skills and analyze the market across the United States.

About OdinJobs.com

OdinJobs (www.odinjobs.com) finds the right job for a job seeker, where ever it may be. Odinjobs uses its AI based matching to identify the right jobs based on a job seeker's qualification and preference. OdinJobs makes job searching easy, fast, and more relevant.

 

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The economic news from the past few weeks has not been good and its getting worse as the seriousness is starting to sink in. What started as a housing market collapse, morphed into a full fledged financial/banking crisis and is now threatening all other sectors of the economy. Officially its now the "Panic of 2008." With the stock market plunging, consumer spending reducing and companies facing severe credit crisis, its only to be expected that layoffs/downsizing start rearing its head and true to form that has started happening. Mass Layoffs are at the highest level since 9/11.  As late as September, it was generally thought that the technology sector would weather the crisis, but looks like that is not likely .. this crisis is proving to be an equal opportunity spreader of gloom and doom. Here are a couple of links that track the layoffs in the tech area. TechCrunch Layoff Tracker: 19,683 Tech Layoffs and Counting CNET: Layoff Scorecard If you are of a strong disposition, look at the personal experiences of  "Joe the Laid-off Guy" and I am sure more are on the way.  A ray of hope in the vast sea of bad news and more bad news is that we at OdinJobs continue to see a fairly decent number of job opening from companies. Even in a recession, companies need to hire, they may hire less, they may take more time to hire but they hire. Find & Be Found Easily Let me pass you a  tip a recruiter friend gave me during the dot-com blow up - Find and be Found easily. Make sure you can find opportunities both online and off, and make sure people can find you both online and off.  During these times companies tend to be picky, hiring managers do not have to spend too much time trying to find people as many are readily available, so its up to you to make sure you can find opportunities quickly and opportunities find you easily. Of course, we at OdinJobs can help you find and be found online as a our mission is to match you to the right opportunity, where ever it is. While you are waiting for your next opportunity, here are 14 Things You can do if you are laid off from a Tech job.

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We all have been hearing about the "Great IT Talent Shortage" for some time now. Here is a recent one, a survey conducted by Deloitte of US HR Professionals, nearly three quarter of them stated talent shortage as their number one concern. The talent shortage drum roll has been going on for quite some time and the sad fact is - there may or may not be a shortage and we will never know for sure,  because the job market is not that efficient. Contrasting Efficiencies - The Stock Market versus The Job Market The stock market is efficient, the job market in general and the online job market in particular is not. Stocks are traded in a few specific places (specific stock exchanges), the online job market aka job boards are everywhere. In the stock market, supply and demand are matched automatically (with the advent of electronic trading). In the job market, the supply (you and me) and the demand (job openings) are to be found everywhere and there is no matching of them across all of the places they can be found. (This is the biggest reason for the existence of OdinJobs, which I will come to later)

Opinion Polls & Market Research

Answering the IT shortage questions emphatically one way or the other is near impossible because of the in-efficiencies of the online job market as listed above. Its like the blind men and the elephant, everybody is right (partially) and everybody maybe wrong. Sure there are long term macro trends like the number of US graduates with a engineering or computer science degree entering the workforce and the boomers starting to retire, but those trends do not explain why Acme, Inc is unable to find a mid-level SYS Admin  today.  One, there are no SYS Admins in the market, or they are looking in one place and the most qualified, well suited SYS Admin is in another place. What do you think is more likely..

 

Truthfully, we won't know for sure unless we have the information of all the available talent out there to come to the correct conclusion. The same holds good when you  are looking for a job. The state of the current job market plays up the role of chance and luck, way beyond the role it should play in matching supply and demand.

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