How Bad is Tech Unemployment?

From Business Week, March 5, 2009...

Economists are predicting that when the government releases its report on Mar. 6, that payroll employment will have declined by the largest amount in 60 years. In an article published today in BusinessWeek, Brian Fabbri, chief economist for BNP Paribas told my colleague Peter Coy that he estimates the unemployment rate will hit 8% in February. “I’ve gone through a number of cycles as an economist on Wall Street, but this one’s different,” he said, adding, “This one’s scary different.”

That may be true for sectors such as retail, construction and finance but as of January 2009 technology sector jobs were faring better than they did after the dot com bust in 2001. “Then, the unemployment rate of tech workers was over 7% and now it’s at 4.8%,” says Tom Silver, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Dice.com, a technology job board. [Update: Unemployment is now at 8.1% for the general economy and 5.4% for tech professionals, according to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Mar. 6]

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