recession

Audio slide show: LaidOffCamp takes creative approach to downturn

LaidOffCamp, held during daylight hours this week at the Temple night club in downtown San Francisco, brought together more than 600 unemployed and self-employed people seeking to share ideas about finding work amid the recession.

Volunteers, speakers, and sponsors came together to plug networking, information exchange, social media, and interconnected community as ways to find support and, hopefully, an income. Among the crowd, there were also entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and recruiters.

Another 16 such events are preliminarily scheduled across the nation, with the next one set for Friday in Dallas. But, not surprisingly, San Francisco was the first to play … Read more

A few bright spots in tech stock gloom

Red ink flowed throughout the broader markets Thursday following unsettling news that General Motors auditors are casting doubt on the company's ability to survive..

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 281.40 points, or 4 percent, to 6,594.44, a low it hasn't seen since 1997.

The Dow's decline has been rapid. Just four trading days ago it was in the 7,000 range. And just 13 trading days before that it was in the 8,000s, where it languished for months.

The Nasdaq closed down 54.15 points, or down 4 percent, to 1,… Read more

Recession demands vertical industry approach

It seems like the headlines are more and more depressing each day. Layoffs, stock market drops, budget deficits, etc. Heck, even my friends in the ever-optimistic Silicon Valley are bummed out.

Yeah, it's looks pretty gloomy, but it's important to remember that the economy isn't binary-- different industries are feeling the pain in different ways. ESG Research recently compared internal data on 2009 IT budget changes by industry with external data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary from February 2009. This comparison uncovers some interesting trends:

Three industry sectors will experience employment … Read more

Ballmer's economic 'reset' vision: Who'd benefit?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, speaking to the technology heads of U.S. federal agencies on Wednesday, suggested that the global economy is in for significant change, as TechFlash reports.

While this suggestion is not surprising, I found his comments about a "resetting" of the economy, a theme he has been discussing a lot lately, interesting in that it would likely favor open source:

Essentially, the economy is going to reset to a different level, and then again be propelled by what really should be, and typically are, the fundamental drivers of economic growth--which are really productivity and innovation.… Read more

Smartphone sales pick up steam in U.S.

Nearly a quarter of all handsets sold in the U.S. during the fourth quarter were smartphones, according to the NPD Group, a market research firm.

A new study released on Tuesday indicates that about 23 percent of all handset sales in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2008 were smartphones. This was up from 12 percent of all handset sales in the fourth quarter of 2007.

But as sales soared, prices for these advanced phones dropped. In fact, the average price of a smartphone during the quarter dropped by 23 percent from $216 in the fourth quarter … Read more

At Silicon Valley job fair, few employers and jobs

SAN MATEO, Calif.--The advertisement for the job fair boasted a list of desirable employers, including Kaiser Permanente, Southwest Airlines, and Wells Fargo Bank.

But when hopeful Silicon Valley job-seekers arrived at the San Mateo Expo Center here Wednesday, they found booths for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and the Army National Guard. The only non-government, non-education, non-security company to appear was Verizon, which was looking for sales representatives to work in local retail stores--previous retail sales experience required.

It turns out that the ad included fine print. It said the companies listed were "previous participating employers.&… Read more

Seeing beyond the recession: The sun also rises

Reading through an excellent essay in Saturday's Wall Street Journal entitled "Will this Crisis Produce a 'Gatsby'?", left me remembering the title of a book I once read, Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises.

We've spent the last decade spending like prodigals. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, then, that so many of us now strain to simply get by. In many ways, as the article points out, we just relived the 1920s and American idealism is now being harshly battered by 1930s style depression, which simply illustrates just how uneven the promise of American mobility … Read more

Job search sites post strong January growth

Jobs, taxes, and travel captured the interest of U.S. Internet surfers in January, marking double-digit to triple-digit gains over the previous month, according to a ComScore report released Thursday.

The number of unique visitors heading to tax sites climbed 176 percent to 24,703 in January, as users geared up for the upcoming tax season, according to ComScore.

Travel sites, meanwhile, posted a 46 percent increase to 13,028 visitors last month, as users took advantage of falling fuel prices and a desire to plan ahead for their vacations, while job search sites climbed 42 percent to 26,702 … Read more

Where will the techies go?

Silicon Valley was late to the recession "party," but the global financial crisis is causing companies to tighten their belts, leaving a stretch of Highway 101 relatively traffic-free and out-of-work entrepreneurs with some difficult choices.

A new report from the Joint Venture Silicon Valley and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, as The New York Times details, indicates a 1.3 percent drop in Silicon Valley employment. That may not sound like much, but if you've driven in Silicon Valley lately in rush-hour traffic, you can see a real difference.

Not everyone, however, is being hit equally:

The … Read more