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Newsletter – October 19, 2009 – Green Shoots?
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This newsletter is published by Kevin Ramsey for Jack's Guides and The IT Jobs
Genie.
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Hi,
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The Winter of our Discontent
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In my last newsletter I reported how our central heating / hot water boiler had
packed in, right on cue as the colder weather moves in.
Luckily, and showing unusual foresight for us, we had taken out a 5 year
warranty, so a few days later the boiler was fixed and we are back to normal.
The interesting thing was, given that I am an IT person who knows nothing about
boilers, the fault was caused by the main circuit board in the boiler, which had
to be replaced.
So now even water heaters are full of computers!
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E-Book Readers - again
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In the last newsletter I talked about e-book readers and mentioned how pleased
we are with ours.
Interestingly, just a few days later there was an article in my newspaper
stating that Google are about to get into the e-book reader market.
Personally I think that’s great. Any new major players will have the effect of
growing the size of the e-book market and pushing down the price of the readers.
Last week I mentioned that the Kindle from Amazon is about to be released in the
UK – previously it had been available only in America.
I forgot to mention that, however good or bad it is compared to my Sony, it does
have one huge disadvantage which will prevent me from ever buying one –namely
that it is a “closed” system which will only read books purchased from Amazon.
In contrast, with the Sony you can buy books on-line from a variety of sources;
you can download free books which are out of copyright and you can load any PDF
files you may have on your PC.
This last feature is very useful as there are many cheap and even free e-books
published in PDF format, all of which can be read on the Sony. Let’s hope that
the Google offering will be a bit more “open” than the Kindle.
The Kindle seems to me yet another example of how emerging technologies are
hobbled by large companies trying to restrict the market for their own purposes.
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80,000 new jobs in The UK in the next 4 years
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This was a headline in one of the UK newspapers last week, as I reported in last
week’s newsletter. The prediction was made by Microsoft chief, Steve Ballmer,
addressing the Confederation of British Industry in London.
Basically Steve was saying that the IT industry in the UK would create 80,000
new jobs here in the next four years. He added “There will be three times as
many jobs created in the information technology sector as in the economy at
large”.
If you want to hear the entire speech and a question and answer session, only
about 30 minutes or so, try this link:
http://www.blip.tv/file/2686406
This has seemed a little bit at odds with the current job situation in IT, so I
decided to repeat our regular jobs survey and see if things were getting better.
Surprisingly, after a long period in the doldrums there are signs of those
fabled “green shoots” many of our politicians like to talk about. Check out
these figures:
Permanent Jobs (per day)
Country
August April July September Oct
2008
2009 2009 2009
2009
USA/Canada
6367
1815 1356 1278 1890
UK
4440
1197 1220 1183 1379
Australia
461
108
116
131
123
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Contract Jobs (per day)
USA / Canada 1932
861 495
787
775
UK
2209 827 878 810 930
Australia
309
131 105
88
95
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ALL Jobs
(per day)
USA / Canada 8299
2676 1851 2065 2665
UK
6647 2024 2098 1993 2309
Australia
770
239
221 219 218
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The good news in all this is that, in a single month, job vacancies in the USA /
Canada have increased by some 29%, in the UK by 16%.
The Australian numbers are a little surprising. There the number of jobs has
remained very flat, despite all the supposed good news we keep hearing about the
Australian economy. It may simply be the normal time lag where the situation in
that country tends to lag a little behind the USA and UK.
We are have some way to go to get to the situation as it was in the middle of
last year, but at least that there are now signs we may have bottomed and are
starting to come out of it.
Now is the time to lay the groundwork. As we start to come out of the recession
there will be a MASSIVE demand for IT staff. Those who have been preparing
themselves will suddenly find their dreams coming true.
Find out how to get your piece of the action by reading our e-book “Success with
the IT Jobs Genie” available at
www.ITjobsGenie.com
See our other publications at
www.JacksGuides.com
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Previous newsletters.
In response to several requests, we have published many of our older
newsletters. You can find them at
http://www.ITjobsGenie.com/news.html
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I hope you've enjoyed this issue of our newsletter.
Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions or requests.
Enjoy and prosper in your chosen career.
Till the next issue.
Kevin Ramsey
Founder of Jack's Guides