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A Bad Time to Be A Professional

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Re: A Bad Time to Be A Professional

#2

    Yikes! These numbers are scary. A 10% decline in
    engineering occupations in just 8 months?
The 10% decline was in "Engineering and architecture occupations," it would be nice if the two were separated out. We had a massive housing bubble and construction boom. It popped. In light of that it is hardly surprising that Architects had a major fall off.

Re: A Bad Time to Be A Professional

#3
post #2

Yikes! These numbers are scary. A 10% decline in engineering occupations in just 8 months? The 10% decline was in "Engineering and architecture occupations," it would be nice if the two were separated out. We had a massive housing bubble and construction boom. It popped. In light of that it is hardly surprising that Architects had a major fall off.

"‘Engineering and architecture occupations’ (actually the BLS reverses the order) is roughly 67% engineers, about 10% architects, surveyors and the like, with the remainder engineering and mapping technicians"

So the majority of 10% decline are engineers.

Re: A Bad Time to Be A Professional

#4
post #2

Yikes! These numbers are scary. A 10% decline in engineering occupations in just 8 months? The 10% decline was in "Engineering and architecture occupations," it would be nice if the two were separated out. We had a massive housing bubble and construction boom. It popped. In light of that it is hardly surprising that Architects had a major fall off.

I agree. It would be nice if the two were separated.

Re: A Bad Time to Be A Professional

#5
post #2

Yikes! These numbers are scary. A 10% decline in engineering occupations in just 8 months? The 10% decline was in "Engineering and architecture occupations," it would be nice if the two were separated out. We had a massive housing bubble and construction boom. It popped. In light of that it is hardly surprising that Architects had a major fall off.

"‘Engineering and architecture occupations’ (actually the BLS reverses the order) is roughly 67% engineers, about 10% architects, surveyors and the like, with the remainder engineering and mapping technicians" So the majority of 10% decline are engineers.

no offense, but that makes no sense whatsoever

Re: A Bad Time to Be A Professional

#6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"‘Engineering and architecture occupations’ (actually the BLS reverses the order) is roughly 67% engineers, about 10% architects, surveyors and the like, with the remainder engineering and mapping technicians" So the majority of 10% decline are engineers.

no offense, but that makes no sense whatsoever

He meant 67% of the 10% decline represented engineers, whereas 33% represented non-engineers.

Re: A Bad Time to Be A Professional

#7
All the evidence available to me suggests that, however bad things may look for long-term employment in IT and CS, the market for freelance talent is strong --- enough so that we've been left wondering for the past 6 months if our business is countercyclical.

Re: A Bad Time to Be A Professional

#8
post #7

All the evidence available to me suggests that, however bad things may look for long-term employment in IT and CS, the market for freelance talent is strong --- enough so that we've been left wondering for the past 6 months if our business is countercyclical.

The freelance talent market is strong, really?

You have any friends looking for a LAMP hacker?

Re: A Bad Time to Be A Professional

#9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"‘Engineering and architecture occupations’ (actually the BLS reverses the order) is roughly 67% engineers, about 10% architects, surveyors and the like, with the remainder engineering and mapping technicians" So the majority of 10% decline are engineers.

no offense, but that makes no sense whatsoever

It makes perfect sense, if the entire decline was in architects then there would be 0 architects left.

Though I'm a mechanical engineer and my company hasn't really been affected, and my brother is an architect and his company has shrunk from 15 to 3. So I imagine the OP is right that a large chunk of the decline is from architecture/construction related jobs, but certainly not all.

Re: A Bad Time to Be A Professional

#10
Yet we had tremendous trouble hiring a solid developer (Denver/Boulder) a month and a half ago. We had a bunch of applications from the barely qualifieds, but it seems that those with a strong skill-set are still in demand.

Hell, I still get 2 or 3 queries a week from headhunters, and I'm not actively looking.

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