America loses 240,000 Tech Industry Jobs in 2009

"While it weathered the storm better than the private sector at large, the U.S. high-tech industry clearly felt the effect of the recession in 2009," said TechAmerica Head Phil Bond.

Software Engineer Jobs have have grown much more competing in the American Tech Trade. It was recently reported that approximately a quarter million tech administrative and engineering careers were lost last year, corresponding to a TechAmerica Foundation Cyberstates examination. Several of the lost tech jobs were in tech centers such as Texas and California.

California Engineering careers came to nearly 1 million from the 5.9 million employed nationally in the software and hardware business. In Second was Texas at 492,000. Rounding out the top five was New York, 309,000; Florida, at 292,000 and Virginia, 283,000. These state statistics are for 2008 whilst hiring cuts were only starting.

"As the largest tech economy in the country, California is experiencing these trends firsthand," said Kevin Carroll, regional director of TechAmerica Southern California.

The examination found that 5.9 million Americans were being employed in the tech engineering industry in 2009, a drop of 245,600 jobs, or 4 percent, from the year previous. Overall private sector occupations dropped 5.2 percent in 2009.

The most significant cuts came in high-tech manufacturing, where employment dropped 8.1 percent in 2009. By contrast, employment fell 3.9 percent in communications services, 1.2 percent in software services, and 3.6 percent in tech and engineering services.

High-tech manufacturing employment were dramatically effected, losing 112,600 jobs (8 percent) in the U.S., but San Diego is not a high-tech manufacturing center, Carroll said, so the impact here is expected to be negligible. In 2008 California pushed the U.S. high-tech market. It employed 993,300 employees at 42,300 organizations in 2008. High-tech individuals in California earned an average yearly wage of $105,500.

California placed first in the U.S. in computer systems design employment; internet and telecommunications services employment; research and development and testing labs employment; and engineering services occupations in 2008. Even with job cuts in high-tech nationwide, software services showed a little progress, building 10,100 jobs during the fourth quarter of 2009.

TechAmerica's president and CEO,Phil Bond, stated that from the objectives his group is wanting from Congress to assist progress the tech industry environment overall is an addition of the research and development tax credit, that is certainly "grievously overdue." Lacking this tax credit, "we are de facto encouraging the outsourcing of innovation around the world," Bond said.

The group is furthermore suggesting the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to move forward on its health IT programs. Bond said health IT "will require tens of thousands" of fresh highly competent individuals and can have "a very positive, stimulative effect" on job creation.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-USA) looks at employment progress in the engineering sector, and announced that hiring grew 7.8% from the last quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2010. Tech engineering employment was actually unwavering quarter to quarter, but remains 5.3% over its first-quarter 2009 low, the IEEE said. IEEE-USA President Evelyn Hirt reported in a statement that "re-employed engineers, scientists and other technology professionals will help create more jobs and ratchet the economy forward."