Dice.com Shows 45% Drop In Tech Jobs

Not only that it's important to remember that a lot of people are being shifted around.

For example, Microsoft regularly had hundreds of job openings before the downturn. So if they make cuts now the cut employees are going to take those other open jobs. That gives you a massive drop in listings from Microsoft even though no one actually became unemployed.

I mean, there are clearly fewer jobs out there and I'm not saying things aren't bad. I'm just saying a drop in listings probably isn't the best indicator of how bad.

If Dice is reporting a 45% drop in postings, then the actual drop in available jobs might be even much steeper. At least in the Cleveland market, headhunters are all sniffing around for any scrap they can find. While it used to be that every job would have 4-ish headhunters advertising for it, that number is now somewhere around ten. Note that my rough analysis is based on the commonality of obscure phrases or skill sets ("Python is a Big Plus"). I don't mean that Python is obscure, but that unique wording shared among postings (especially in Cleveland) lets me know that it's probably the same job with a headhunter doing a cut & paste into his own description. That companies are adopting standardized vendor managements systems where job requirements are presented to all qualified (gone through proper procedure) headhunters only adds to the redundancy. It used to be that a hiring manager would simply call up his favorites and circumvent the other eighteen firms who have an established contract with the company.

Good point. There's been an increasing awareness of the ineffectiveness of the bigger job boards, of which Dice is certainly one, over the past year or so thanks to people like Nick Crocodilo. This may be as much or more a reflection of a long-term downward trend in postings on Dice and Monster, versus on smaller, more targeted job boards or more local ones like Craigslist. In their shortsighted attempt to feed on the fear and insecurity of their target audience regarding the economy and the job market, I would not be surprised if Techcruch has missed the opportunity to write about the more interesting but less obvious story behind the headline. Nor should I be surprised given the editorial style and attention-hungry focus of Techcrunch. Such a mindset tends not to produce a lot of thoughtful analysis for fear of losing the mass audience.

I'm launching a site next week for Internet-related job listings in the SF Bay Area for just this reason. The bigger sites annoyed me both as an employer and as a job seeker for the reasons you mention. I reached out directly to friends and HR folks at local companies and have a pretty good number of listings to start. Hopefully this will be a bit more targeted. I'll post to Ask HN for feedback, post-launch.

I run a personal finance blog and wrote a few posts about jobs. Some of the best performing posts I've had in terms of search traffic.

In addition to that, I know that, at least in the Bay Area, there has been a consolidation among smaller recruiting firms. That may contribute to the decrease in job postings.

What do you think is going to happen to all the people who got laid off?

Unemployment is the lagging indicator, not job postings.

Or, the tech industry is subject to its own efficiency; a poetic justice of sorts.

On the employer side, honestly, I don't think we're big enough for our data to be statistically significant. I can say that we've had another record month of traffic & applications.

Despite all the doom and gloom, people are hiring.