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The Dice Report is a monthly take on trends in IT hiring, technology job postings and other statistical information that Dice can synthesize from its established job board. The most significant findings to me are about where the jobs seem to be. With the accompanying graph as evidence, take a look at where technology jobs are in demand.
The DC Metro region is the dominant player right now, with the New York Metro area coming in second. There is a significant delta between Silicon Valley and the D.C. and N.Y. regions. Why?
I put that and a number of questions to Dice SVP and CMO, Tom Silver. What follows is a Q&A with Silver:
Why the high propensity of job openings in D.C. Metro and N.Y./N.J.?
“Both Washington, D.C., and the New York metropolitan regions are major technology job centers and have been so for quite some time. D.C. is by far the strongest market when you look at demand on a year-over-year basis—which is flat. Demand in New York is off 44 percent versus March last year. The decline is not surprising given the number of financial services firms in the N.Y. area. However, there are still more than 5,000 open positions in New York on any given day, making it one of our larger markets.“
Why is D.C. is ranked the highest right now? Is there an uptick in government technology jobs with the new Obama administration?
“The stability of budgets in both government agencies and the contractors that serve the federal government is most likely the key differentiator versus other parts of the country. In addition, if you have a federal security clearance, there are more job opportunities this year than last.“
What type of jobs are dominating in these regions?
“There is a breadth of opportunities in each market. In New York, there is a number of programming, consulting, project management and software development openings. In addition to those skills, security positions at all levels in Washington, D.C.“
What’s going on in Silicon Valley? The numbers are significantly lower than the Atlantic region. How do you account for that given the large number of employers in the historically tech-dominant area of the country?
“It’s hard to say. Silicon Valley isn’t much different from the rest of the country in terms of lower demand. However, venture capital funding has been reduced, and that impacts Silicon Valley more than many other markets. The one exception is Washington, D.C., which is on an economic ecosystem that is all its own at this point.“
It appears the jobs are, in fact, following Obama, the country’s new CIO Vivek Kundra and the administration’s tech-leaning strategies.
Silver goes on to say that for the D.C. Metro region, those with security clearances are seeing an uptick in job demand as compared with last year. Also, he’s keen to point out that Dice is seeing about 50,000 job postings in a given day, compared with about 19,000 a day during the post-9/11 tech-bubble recession of 2002.