Tech Industry Beginning To Add Jobs
September 14, 2010
| 10:51 AM
A high-tech industry group Tuesday touted figures it says shows technology companies added 30,200 U.S. jobs in the first six months of 2010, saying that while the industry was among the last to lose jobs at the start of the recession, it's among the first to begin adding jobs.
The Tech America Foundation report, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, focused on four sectors: tech manufacturing, communications services, software services, and engineering and tech services, which added the most jobs with 29,700. Software services added the second most jobs with 14,200, followed by tech manufacturing at 9,100. Those gains, however, were offset by the 22,800 job losses in the communications services sector, which includes Internet and telecom companies.
"As one of the last industries to feel the effects of the recession, the technology industry is now appears to be slowly turning the corner with the rest of the economy," TechAmerica President and CEO Phil Bond said in a statement. "We have weathered the storm better than most. From its position embedded in every other industry, technology remains the best hope for driving robust recovery across the economy."
While the industry is now adding jobs, it still has a ways to go to get back to where it was before the recession hit. As of June, 5.78 million U.S. workers were employed in tech fields, compared to 5.99 million in January 2009, according to Josh James, TechAmerica Foundation's vice president for research and industry analysis.
The tech industry has come under some criticism for moving some jobs offshore. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has used the issue in her bid for re-election against her Republican opponent, Carly Fiorina. Boxer claims Fiorina moved thousands of U.S. jobs to other countries during her tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
In a New York Times op-ed on Monday, Ron Hira, a public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, said that even high-skilled technology jobs are being sent offshore. "Many major American firms are offshoring innovation and very advanced research and development to low-cost countries," Hira wrote.
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