
Is there some kind of tech crash happening right now? - fragsworth
http://www.indeed.com/jobanalytics/jobtrends?q=engineer%2C+programming%2C+engineering&l=
======
svachalek
I think you're just not using modern terminology:

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=rock+star&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=rock+star&l=)

~~~
thaumaturgy
Cute, but that graph ranges from 0 to 0.04 percent -- it would be just a blip
on the other graph, which ranges from 0 to 10 percent.

~~~
joezydeco
FTFY:
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=engineer%2C+programming%2C...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=engineer%2C+programming%2C+engineering%2C+rock+star&l=&relative=1)

~~~
thaumaturgy
I can't tell if you're being serious or not.

~~~
joezydeco
Totally serious. I changed the graph to "relative" to show growth of the term
over the period.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Just in case the xkcd that crntaylor posted doesn't explain the situation well
enough:

Let's assume that there's 10,000 total job postings in your graph. If the
"rock star" trend grew from just 1 posting to just 70 postings, that would
represent a 7000% growth over the period, even though "rock star" would still
represent just .007 of the total market.

Growth graphs answer a very specific kind of question, and it's rarely the
question that people mean to ask.

Or, put another way: click the "Absolute" link next to "Scale", under
"engineer, programming, engineering, rock star Job Trends".

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mopatches
The chart is based on relative percentage, not absolute counts. So it's
useless - if more gardeners look for jobs on Indeed.com then the
engineer/developer/etc lines in this chart drop off. The chart doesn't mean
anything in isolation.

~~~
thedufer
This seems like a reasonable explanation, given that "manager", "plumber", and
"electrician" all show similar drop-offs _. I wonder what is increasing enough
to have such a visible effect, though.

_ You can't see them on the same graph since they're magnitudes are so
different, so this isn't easy to see/I may be imagining things.

~~~
minikomi
"Tax" is one which seems to be increasing.

~~~
empthought
Tax preparation is the largest seasonal occupation.

Edit: by which I actually mean that H&R Block is the largest seasonal employer
(the Jeopardy question that ended Ken Jennings's run).

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dragonwriter
Since they appear to search some set of available online job listing sites,
its clearly a change in the mix of listings at those sites -- but it doesn't
even necessarily mean a change in relative number of tech jobs to other jobs
available (much less a tech crash). Simply a burst in non-tech jobs being more
widely posted to different job sites (or new job sites that are non-tech
oriented being added to indeed.com's database) would produce this effect.

~~~
seregine
In fact there's a corresponding uptick in "health" jobs:
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=software%2C+health&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=software%2C+health&l=)

~~~
minikomi
Also "work from home". I'm guessing something flooded the job boards in the
last month with a single term (think something spammy!), combined with a
seasonal downturn .

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briholt
There also appears to be a major crash in demand for "2012"

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=2012&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=2012&l=)

~~~
nathan_long
Holy cow, I shoulda sold those months while they were still fresh!

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kjackson2012
That's an interesting graph, and it seems like a material downturn, in my
opinion. I wouldn't call it a crash though.

There could be a variety of reasons: fiscal cliff concerns, startup series A
crunch, etc. My guess is that the FB IPO debacle had a huge impact on funding
in Silicon Valley, which probably killed a lot of jobs. Whether or not that's
a big deal going forward I don't know.

~~~
muzz
No. Even as a percentage of jobs it's not very useful. I.e, do you really
believe that engineering/programming jobs peaked in late 2008 / early 2009?

~~~
cheez
This may then be an indicator that hiring is generally picking back up.
Gobama?

------
Steko
Obligatory:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines>

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rpwilcox
I _have_ seen a lot of freelancers on Twitter tweeting that they have
availability. So, another potentially interesting data point.

~~~
notatoad
I'm fairly certain that your subjective opinion of things you've seen on
twitter doesn't count as "data".

~~~
rpwilcox
Absolutely true: it's the basis for a hypothesis more than anything. "Are
there more availability tweets on Twitter in the last month than previous
months?" However, if OP wants another data source to show what the Indeed
graph is showing, using Twitter might prove interesting (or not)

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byoung2
I doubt it. Maybe employers are getting more specific with their postings:

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=big+data%2C+mobile+apps%2C...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=big+data%2C+mobile+apps%2C+cloud&l=)

~~~
thedufer
Those all show the same downturn in the last few weeks, though.

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redwood
Notice no crash is evident when querying for any _one_ of the terms:
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=engineer&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=engineer&l=)
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=engineering&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=engineering&l=)
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=programming&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=programming&l=)

Thus there's something funny going on

~~~
eclark
I see a downturn when looking at a single term.

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arbuge
Fascinating tool. Some other interesting ones:

financial crisis in effect:
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=repo+&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=repo+&l=)

no idea about this one:
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=terrorist&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=terrorist&l=)

no idea about this one either:
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=escort&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=escort&l=)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Second one was Obama's first election. Jobs having "terrorist" in the name are
not jobs for blowing up buildings, they're jobs beating the drum for
Republicans. Then in 2010 the Republicans failed to take the Senate and in so
doing realized that terrorism rhetoric wasn't having the same effect as it did
a decade ago, so they started focusing on other things.

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dalacv
Something changed, because I reviewed a few of these charts last month and
they indicated no fall for any of the top trending words. So, they must have
changed the way that they are rendering the data, or adjusted the data.

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dwg
another take on it from SimplyHired:

[http://www.simplyhired.com/a/trends/aoccupation?ocp=Computer...](http://www.simplyhired.com/a/trends/aoccupation?ocp=Computer+Engineers+and+Programmers&month=2013-01)

~~~
jussij
So their figures concur, indicating a marked slow in computer engineering last
year.

I know personally 2012 was a very bad year for I.T. here in Australia. But it
has seem to be picking up a little since the start of 2013.

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jzf
this chart does not empirically prove this. It only proves that less people
are trafficking in these jobs through Indeed. These kinds of jobs are
increasingly being found through other channels.

~~~
justizin
Right. It could actually show a downturn in the market for job posting sites
like monster. When I worked for Simply Hired, I thought it was really odd that
I found the job through Craigslist, but the White House was calling us for
hard numbers indicating demand for skills in the job market.

~~~
justizin
I mean, CL jobs would end up on Simply Hired as well, I just felt like we only
had a slice, even if a big one, and we didn't know enough about the sample.

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baddox
The same trend occurs for designers:

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=web+design%2C+graphic+desi...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=web+design%2C+graphic+design%2C+designer&l=)

~~~
donquix
There's a secretary crash too!
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=secretary&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=secretary&l=)

But seriously, this is relative to other job postings, so you can't say it is
necessarily a crash, it could just be that the diversity of job types is
increasing, or other areas of the job market are growing faster than these
particular ones.

~~~
dizzystar
I think it's just the job descriptions are changing, as one of the above posts
shows by comparing "guru" and "ninja."

No one wants a "Secretary" anymore, they want "Front-Office." "Office
Assistant," and other buzz-worthy people.

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=front+office&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=front+office&l=)

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=office+assistant&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=office+assistant&l=)

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dmor
Maybe at Microsoft
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=google%2C+microsoft%2C+app...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=google%2C+microsoft%2C+apple%2C+amazon&l=)

~~~
yajoe
You may be on to something. Of the companies in your query, only Microsoft has
results on the same scale as the 'engineer' query (6-8% of jobs posting). And,
Microsoft has a downturn that is visually similar as the 'engineering' query.
So, it could be that another big player or major deal recently landed and
increased the job mix. Or, it could be an effect of Microsoft's recent
recruiter layoff (I only know about this because a friend was affected -- no
idea how widespread, etc.).

I don't know, but your data has a reasonable narrative.

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jdavis703
According to this Indeed graph most jobs are seeing a decline in new postings:
<http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends/industry>

I'd be more inclined to hypothesize that companies are slowing down hiring
after bringing on lots of people post-recession. It would be more concerning
if numbers such as unemployment were creeping up.

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forgotAgain
Interesting, especially considering today's headlines regarding a possible
immigration agreement in Washington.

What I've read about it so far indicates that provision for more foreign tech
worker visas will be shoe-horned into any agreement. I wonder if the mega body
shops have insider information on this and are holding back to get cheaper
labor.

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grimey27
Everything I see/read says the exact opposite - there are plenty of jobs, it's
the talent pool that needs to catch up.

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dredmorbius
I'm seeing a persistent trail-off for recent data on a large number of search
terms. I'd suspect a data norming/smoothing bug affecting the current month.

Well, except that some generic searches show not final dip:
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=job&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=job&l=)

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0x0
This is a chart of searches for jobs, not listings of available jobs, right?
And it's at the top around 2008-2009 which was just around the time of the
latest financial crisis?

Wouldn't this be more a sign of just the opposite, then? People have jobs and
aren't searching for new ones?

~~~
john_b
From the page: "This job trends graph shows the percentage of jobs we find
that contain your search terms."

Sounds like they're crawling sites like Monster.com and counting keywords.

~~~
0x0
Ah, you're right. I misread.

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photorized
Alternatively, it could be that the number of non-engineering jobs has been
going up.

------
spullara
Google down. Apple flat. Facebook and Twitter sharply up:

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=google%2C+twitter%2C+apple...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=google%2C+twitter%2C+apple%2C+facebook&l=)

------
aaronsnoswell
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=engineer%2C+programming%2C...](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=engineer%2C+programming%2C+engineering%2C+developer&l=)

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accomplice
I searched "front end" and separately "UI" and the graphs are staggering --
for those searches it's nothing but boom time. I would expect similar results
for "python" or "ruby"

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ratonofx
It's just a "take-over"
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=social+media&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=social+media&l=)

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cm2012
Oh shit... E-commerce too
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=e-commerce&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=e-commerce&l=)

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zopf
Looks like your mom's going down too.

[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=your+mom&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=your+mom&l=)

Ahem.

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sxtxixtxcxh
that graph covers 6 days in the middle of january and the "crash" happens on a
saturday.

is it really that surprising?

edit: ahaha, years. got it. thanks. :)

~~~
robotrobot
I think those numbers are years.... :)

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jchung
If these positions are "down" relatively, then I wonder what positions are
"up" relatively?

~~~
jchung
Here's an interesting "up" keyword: "part time"
[http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=part+time&l=](http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=part+time&l=)

That's not a good thing.

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jpdoctor
Considering the crash in VC follow-on funding, it's somewhat expected.

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jaekwon
There may be a _job market_ crash.

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pxlpshr
i heard designers are the new black.

or maybe i'm just biased...

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static_typed
When we started seeing brogrammers and fauxgrammers, crashing code, let alone
a tech crash, was inevitable.

