| July 2006 |
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| Employers, both large and small, report a need for new tech hires; Dice.com listings are up |
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| City living doesn't get much better than in Philadelphia, at least according to the June 2006 issue Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, which found it to be a "smart city" in which to live, the second largest urban area on the list, trailing only Atlanta. Recent articles in The New York Times and elsewhere have also sung Philadelphia's praises, especially when it comes to the cost of living as compared to other big northeastern cities such as New York and Boston. In May, the City Council approved a plan to deploy high-speed wireless Internet access across 135 square miles by the third quarter of 2007. When it does, Philadelphia will be the first large city to have its own wireless Internet network. It's obvious that Philly has tech on its mind.
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But are employees in the tech sector smart to be working and looking for work in the City of Brotherly Love? Yes, if the most recent statistics are any indication. The Hudson Employment Index, which measures local worker and employer confidence, was up 5% in June. According to Steve Wolfe, executive vice president, Hudson North America, Philadelphia showed a marked improvement in confidence in personal finances and hiring expectations in its most recent report.
And the quarterly Manpower Employment Outlook Survey has found that 28% of the companies interviewed plan to hire more employees in the third quarter, according to Manpower spokesperson Andrew Doline. Though less optimistic, a report coming from IT staffing consultancy Robert Half Technology also finds hiring going on. It's third-quarter IT Hiring Index finds that a net 14% of Philadelphia CIOs plan to make new hires this quarter.
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| The only sector with job creation and wage increases was IT. |
| - MidAtlanta Employers Association study |
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A fourth study, this one from the regional MidAtlantic Employers' Association (a group with 700 members, most of them small- and mid-size businesses), showed flat employment growth for four out of the five sectors it tracks. Through April, the only sector with both job creation and wage increases was IT.
At Dice.com, the number of Philadelphia job listings rose 6% in the second quarter, from 3,344 in March to 3,543 in June.
Statewide, Pennsylvania has more than 200,000 high-tech workers and the Bureau of Labor Statistics points out that world-class colleges, universities, and research institutes deliver great young workers into the tech arena. The BLS says that the state has attracted three times the national average of engineers, architects, scientists, and computer professionals. (Philadelphia's Drexel University made headlines way back in 1982 when it became America's first institution of higher learning to require all incoming students to own a personal computer.)
In the Philadelphia area, the largest IT employers are Siemens Medical Solutions, Verizon, Lockheed Martin and Unisys. A quick peek at job listings at Siemens shows openings for engineers, manufacturing technicians, network engineers, security technicians and more. At Lockheed, 133 available positions in the Philadelphia area cover the tech gamut from computer systems analysts to telecom specialists.
One bright spot for the future: West Philadelphia High School and its Academy for Automotive Mechanical Engineering, where for the second year in a row, students won the national Tour de Sol, a competition to build and race energy-efficient cars. In a few short years, some of these smart students may be looking for tech jobs in the Philly region, and the tech-friendly region looks ready to welcome them.
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| Dice job postings in Philadelphia are up 11% since Dec. |
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