Where are the jobs

As I sat there contemplating my belly button, I decided to look once more at the job sites and see if I could determine where the jobs are. It was an interesting experience.

A couple of things to start with: Jobs are scarce in this part of the World, the New York Metro area is not the booming metropolis it once used to be; While jobs are down, Headhunters tell me good candidates are also becoming scarce. I have also noted that DICE.COM which displays a count of current jobs in it's system has been dropping that number. 2 years ago they displayed half a million jobs, 6 months ago it was 35,000, last Tuesday it was 29,000.

I used three engines: Monster, Hotjobs and Dice. The search criteria was simply 'VB'. The location was the entire USA, and the time limit on jobs was the site default (30 days I think).

Monster showed 791 jobs containing the phrase 'VB'. The others showed lesser numbers.

The distribution of jobs was the main thing. It was readily apparent that the jobs were all over, but with particular emphasis on California, The South and Washington DC. The corridor from Baltimore to Boston was conspicuous by its absence from the tally.

I guess DC showed up because the government is spending our deficit like money exists, and there are many eager companies willing to suck it all up.

California surprised me, I guess the hard times in Silicon Valley are coming to an end. The breadth across the south was no surprise, though the fact that the Mid-west seemed to have more jobs than the North-east seemed a bit telling. There were almost as many jobs listed in Kansas as New York.

I guess that the New York Metro area just needs a bit more time to recover. In the meantime, all those former programmers with no particular roots up here in the North-East seem to be streaming South and West.