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Region’s Tech Community Averts National Job-Loss Disaster

The job scene in the high-tech world is still stormy. Fortunately, San Diego appears to be providing a safe harbor.

The TechAmerica Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., released a September report that shows the U.S. high-tech industry shed 115,000 jobs between January 2009 and June, a decline of 1.9 percent.

Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the study looks at four sectors within the high-tech industry: manufacturing, communications services, software services, and engineering and tech services.

“The tech industry has suffered the full force of the global economic recession in the first half of this year,” said TechAmerica Foundation President Christopher W. Hansen.

Or, put another way ouch!

But are San Diego workers in those fields feeling the same pain as their national counterparts?

Kevin Carroll, regional director of TechAmerica for San Diego, Orange and Los Angeles counties, has a hunch the answer is “no.” It’s a little more than a hunch because he checked with the study’s lead researcher who confirmed that, although the trade group doesn’t break out the numbers regionally, tech jobs in the Southern California region have tended to be more resilient.

“San Diego has not seen the same amount of layoffs that workers have endured nationally,” Carroll said. “We didn’t see massive layoffs from Fortune 500 companies here, and our bank of small companies worked hard to keep their core employees. San Diego was a good place to sit out the economic downturn, at least from a technology perspective.”

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Rays Of Light:

Another batch of encouraging news comes by way of the most recent Innovation Report issued by Connect, a San Diego-based technology trade group.

Focusing on innovation in California, the report shows San Diego County accounting for 14 percent of technology businesses started in California in the second quarter of 2009, ranking third after Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties.

Describing the results as “tremendously positive,” co-author Camille Sobrian noted that 102 technology companies were created in San Diego during the three months ending June 30, a 53 percent increase over the 66 startups launched during the first three months of 2009.

Executive Kimberly Sitz, co-founder of The Cydio Group, an information technology staffing firm, offers another ray of light.

“Hiring has picked up considerably since the first quarter of this year,” she said.


Send technology news items to Richard Gincel at rgincel@sdbj.com.

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