美国科技行业失业率创历史新低

美国科技就业市场上一次如此红火还是在2000年1月。当时Pets.com拿出120万美元在超级碗上打广告（圣路易斯公羊队获得了冠军），投资者不断抬高B2B电子商务公司的股价（还记得Commerce One吗？），美国在线斥资1650亿美元收购时代华纳更是让世界感到震惊。

这次会出什么岔子呢？可能是人才问题造成增长放缓。

美国计算机行业协会（CompTIA）就此撰写了研究报告。该机构的研究和市场情报执行副总裁蒂姆·赫伯特说：“现在一个非常实际的问题是科技从业者短缺正在影响行业增长。打算向物联网、机器人加工自动化或者人工智能等新领域进军的公司可能面临的障碍是掌握这些先进技术的劳动者不足，科技基础设施和网络安全等辅助性领域的人员匮乏就更不用说了。”

据CompTIA介绍，今年5月，美国科技行业的失业率为1.3%，突破了此前的历史低点，比如2018年3月和2007年4月，也就是全球金融危机对市场造成巨大破坏的前一年。前两个时间点的失业率均为1.4%。

软件和应用开发商成为美国IT领域就业增长的主力军，5月的就业人数超过13.3万（大家可以比较一下，5月的美国就业人数共净增7.5万人，由此可见科技行业对美国经济来说有多么重要）。

相关指标表明IT就业市场将继续以破纪录的速度增长。上周三上午，求职网站Glassdoor上共有8007个数据分析师职位有待填补。而在领英上，用人单位打算在美国招聘的软件工程师接近22万名。

很长一段时间以来，经济学家一直对空缺职位的逐月稳步增长感到担心，因为这表明劳动技能缺口已经大到了影响经济增长的程度。美国劳工部在上周称，空缺职位数量比美国失业人数多163万，这也是2000年以来的最高纪录。华尔街投行Jefferies的美国首席金融经济学家沃德·麦卡锡在研究报告中指出：“就业增长面临的最大威胁来自于可用供给，而非劳动力需求。”

科技行业对人才争夺战的感受最为深切。在上周一的《财富》杂志CEO Initiative大会上，IBM的首席执行官罗睿兰说这正在变成一个全球性的重大问题。她表示：“我相信我们以及其他国家出现如此多分歧的原因都能归结为技能问题。”

分析师认为，短期内，空前紧张的就业市场不仅会推高最近毕业的计算机专业学生的工资，还会引发更多科技公司并购。正如他们所说，在硅谷，如果造不出来，就买过来（或者，具体到本文，就收购过来）。上周二，Saleforce向数据分析公司Tableau提出157亿美元的收购报价，这是Saleforce历史上出价最高的并购。两周前，谷歌收购了另一家大数据分析公司Looker，交易价格为26亿美元。

撰稿人尼克·科拉柯夫斯基在热门IT就业论坛Dice.com上写道：“所有这些并购都可能对专业涉及终端用户分析的科技从业人员产生巨大影响。比如说，收购方需要找人来运用这些基于云的新工具，而数据分析和商业智能专家可能会发现自己成了它们的目标。”

领英在它的2019年6月劳动人口报告中指出，招聘趋势还可能影响美国劳动者的迁移模式。在领英追踪的城市中，堪萨斯州威奇塔市流失的劳动力最多。领英称：“在过去12个月中，每一万名当地领英会员中有250人离开了威奇塔市。”情况截然相反的则是科技圣地奥斯汀市，它是一年来最有吸引力的地方。在每一万名当地领英会员中，刚到这座城市的有110人。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

The last time the labor market for U.S. tech workers ran this hot was January, 2000 – the same month Pets.com splashed out $1.2 million on a Super Bowl ad (the Saint Louis Rams went on to win the game), investors were driving up shares of B2B e-commerce companies (remember Commerce One?), and America Online had just shocked the world with its $165 billion acquisition of Time Warner.

What could go wrong this time around? Try a talent-driven slowdown.

“There is now the very real prospect of tech worker shortages affecting industry growth,” says Tim Herbert, executive vice president for research and market intelligence at CompTIA, the tech trade group that authored the study. “Firms seeking to expand into new areas such as the Internet of Things, robotic process automation or artificial intelligence may be inhibited by a lack of workers with these advanced skills, not to mention shortages in the complementary areas of technology infrastructure and cybersecurity.”

According to CompTIA, the unemployment rate for America’s technology workers hit 1.3 percent in May. It’s come close to touching these lows before, most recently in March, 2018 and again in April 2007, a year before the global financial crisis wreaked havoc on markets. At those moments, the rate reached 1.4 percent.

Software and applications developers paced the field of new U.S. IT hires, which topped 133,000 in May. (To put that into perspective, employers added a net total of 75,000 jobs last month, an indication of just how vital the tech sector has become to the country’s economic fortunes.)

Indicators point to an IT jobs market that will continue to grow at a record-setting pace. Last Wednesday morning, Glassdoor had 8,007 open data analyst jobs listed on its site. On LinkedIn, meanwhile, employers were seeking to fill nearly 220,000 software engineer positions in the U.S.

Economists have long been fretting over the steady month-by-month increase in open job positions, a sign the skills gap is worsening to a point that imperils growth. The U.S. Labor Department last week said vacancies exceeded the ranks of unemployed Americans by 1.63 million, the highest number since—yep—2000. “The biggest threat to job growth is available supply, not demand for labor,” said Ward McCarthy, chief financial U.S. economist at Jefferies, said in a note.

Nowhere can the war on talent be felt more acutely than in the tech sector. On last Monday at Fortune’s CEO Initiative, IBM CEO Virginia Rometty said the issue is becoming a matter of international importance. “I believe so much of the division in our country and other countries roots down to this skills issue,” Rometty said.

In the short term, the historically tight labor market will not just drive up salaries for recent computer science grads, but also fuel further M&A activity in tech, analysts note. As they say in Silicon Valley, If you can’t build it, buy it. (Or, in this case, acquire it.) Last Tuesday, Salesforce bid $15.7 billion for data analytics company Tableau, the most expensive deal it’s ever undertaken. Two weeks ago, Google bought Looker, another big-data analytics company, for $2.6 billion.

“All that M&A action could end up having a huge impact on tech professionals who specialize in anything related to end-user analytics,” Nick Kolakowski writes on the popular IT jobs board, Dice.com. “Data analysts and B.I. [business intelligence] specialists, for example, could find themselves targeted by companies that have acquired these new cloud-based tools and need someone to operate them.”

Job opening trends also impact U.S. worker migration patterns, LinkedIn points out in its June 2019 workforce report. Wichita, Kan., lost the most amount of people for cities it tracks. “For every 10,000 LinkedIn members in Wichita, KS, 250 left in the past 12 months,” the company notes. On the other end of the spectrum is the tech mecca, Austin, which appears to be the most attractive city over the past year. Austin recorded 110 new arrivals for every 10,000 LinkedIn members.