* Country's high-tech sector adds jobs, but the number lags that of the private sector
The U.S. tech industry almost doubled the number of jobs it added in the first six months of this year, a 2.5% rise, but the growth lags behind that of the country’s private sector, which rose by 3.5% over the same period.
According to a report recently published by the American Electronics Association (AeA), the country’s tech industry added more than 140,000 jobs between January and June this year, for a total of 5.81 million. The job growth figure is almost double the 78,900 tech jobs added in the same period in 2005, and was the strongest job growth of any six-month period since 2001, says the association.
Both the tech manufacturing and the services sectors, in which AeA includes communications, software, and engineering and tech services, added 2.5% more jobs in the first half of this year compared to last year. Technology manufacturers added 33,100 net jobs for a total of 1.37 million jobs in the country, while the services sectors added 107,000 net jobs bumping up the total of jobs here to 4.44 million. Within this sector, engineering and tech services added the most net jobs, 49,800, followed by software services, which added 44,500 net jobs, and communication services, which added 12,700 jobs.
The association maintains that the tech job growth could accelerate if the country was better able to attract qualified workers. “Our companies struggle to find workers to fill thousands of technical positions right here in the United States. Too many American workers lack the science, math and engineering backgrounds for these positions,” AeA President and CEO William T. Archey said in a statement. He says companies are hamstrung by the limitations of work visas for foreign workers. “One of every four scientists and engineers in the United States is a foreign national. They have created tens of thousands of high-paying jobs over recent decades,” he adds.
There are a number of initiatives to help build a better skilled workforce in the United States, including those of the SIM Foundation, a nonprofit foundation set up by the Society for Information Management last month, and the IEEE-USA’s “Innovation Institute”, where the nation’s top innovators will educate the country’s handpicked students.
The AeA report can be downloaded from the association’s Web site.
