Job Market fills with out-of-work Techies...

Updated on March 27, 2009

Back on the 15th I stumbled across an interesting, yet depressing, statistics page maintained by Wired.com. It chronicled the growing number of tech related lay-offs per company across the technology industry. I also wrote an article of my own based off these findings. At the time that article was written the number had reached 247,098.

To have seen a quarter of a million workers becoming jobless, made one wonder what will they turn to for income? In all the scientific studies over the years and the predictions on how technology will evolve, it always seemed to end in humans becoming less an less essential. However, reality always seems to be trickier to predict than we think. Instead of technology itself forcing out people when it reaches maturity, it seems that another force (the economy) has stepped in to play a much bigger role than previously thought.

Well this is a slight update to that article, as if anyone needed reminding of how bad things are going. Still, if we don't follow up with subjects covered then why should we bring them to the light in the first place?

I've found yet another continuing coverage page of company-by-company mass lay-offs from the technology industry, maintained by CNET.com this time. A lot has happened in the past two weeks, unfortunately. Google has let go 200 employees (roughly 1% of their workforce, a relatively small amount), but IBM has let go over 1,600 of its associates. Naturally this does nothing but increase growing concerns for a job market's competition getting more and more fierce across the world.

But don't worry there are options still available. Have a look at "14 things to do if you are laid off from a tech job", it has some good advice on how to get around a shrinking job market. I've also placed an on-going resource for who's hiring below.

Credit to Rafe Needleman of CNET.com