The Recession-Proof Myth
Job websites claim that some industries, like software engineering and nursing, are “recession-proof” — but there’s no such thing.By Blake Thorne
February 5, 2009
(istockphoto.com)Chris Paladino is a casualty of the economic recession. That’s what the computer programmer and ex-Microsoft blogger/employee’s Twitter page read on Jan. 22, hours after the software giant laid off him and about 5,000 others. “As you can imagine, it’s been a pretty rough week,” he said.
Under ordinary circumstances Paladino’s job probably would have been safe, even in an aggressive economic slump. For years, experts have heralded certain occupations as “recession-proof,” rising above the high-water line when the tides of a downturn pour in. But things have changed.
On Jan. 19, 55,000 American jobs disappeared in one day, and 75,000 were lost worldwide. The job-loss ax isn’t restricted to the Rust Belt anymore. Along with Microsoft, Intel, IBM and Texas Instruments cut tech sector positions. Hospitals in Oregon and Pennsylvania let registered nurses go. This January, when unemployment insurance claims reached the highest on record, one thing became painfully clear to thousands of workers: There is no such thing as a recession-proof job.
In November, as the economy cranked American unemployment up to a staggering 6.8 percent, Forbes magazine released a list of 10 “Most Recession-Proof Jobs.” Sales representative topped the list, with nursing taking the number eight spot and computer technology jobs holding numbers five (software design) and seven (networking and system administration). A Jan. 15 posting titled “Recession-Proof Jobs” on a Monster.com blog lists computers and high technology as one of ten ironclad fields.
John Abell disagrees with these claims. “I don’t think anybody in the tech industry has ever felt terribly secure about anything,” he said. “That premise is a little bit askew.”
Abell, who is the New York City Bureau Chief for Wired magazine and covers the tech industry for Wired News, calls this collapse different from the bubble-burst in 2000 because today’s recession is a “global pandemic” that reaches across industries and continents. No one is safe,” he said. “It would be crazy to think you were immune.”
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, layoffs in the computer and electronic products industry were at a five-year high in the third quarter of 2008. Not since the last days of the 2003 Dot-Com bust has Silicon Valley seen so much work vanish.
Abell doesn’t blame the blogosphere for flimsy foresight on the “recession-proof” claims. Software design and IT work may have seemed like stable career choices in November, he said, but everything is different now. “Looking at things through the prism of some semblance of normalcy and then transposing that to the really extraordinary of conditions isn’t exactly true,” Abell said.
So if the tech sector is vulnerable, what about the other fields on these lists? There is often an instinctual “people need to” theory of occupational stability. People need to die, eat, go to the hospital, and so on. Almost all “recession-proof” conversations succumb to this theory and include the same job, the holy grail of professional security: nursing.
“Even though in the recession health care is still hiring, health care does experience downturns,” said Dennis Damp, editor of Healthcarejobs.org. Damp said while hospitals may not respond to the economy with job cuts, medical staff are forced to pick up the slack with fewer hours, promotion freezes, slimmer benefit packages or more demanding workloads. He spoke with a dental hygienist who lost her full time hours and had to switch to multiple temp jobs, and a physical therapist whose employer froze hiring.
Layoffs in other fields mean fewer workers with health insurance or money to pay premiums, leading to fewer patients and over-staffed, under-resourced hospitals. Damp wrote the book Health Care Job Explosion! and appeared on CNN eleven times last year to discuss the economic impact on the health sector. Like Abell, Damp shied away from the term “recession-proof.” Although the healthcare industry is still hiring, he prefers to call it “recession-resistant.”
“Even though it’s recession-resistant, there’s still an impact,” Damp said. “There isn’t an industry or group that isn’t going to bear the burden.” Direct patient-care jobs in health, like nursing, are safer than their non-direct counterparts. But some of the strongest need in direct-care jobs is in lower-level positions—like home health care—with lower pay.
The Department of Labor predicts those home health aid positions growing about 55 percent from 2006 figures. Projections for registered nurses show growth but smaller, at about 23 percent. Smaller still are computer and information system managers and computer support specialists, at 16 and 12 percent respectively.
But growth is growth, and double-digit projections are far better than some occupations (farmers: -8 percent, computer programmers: -4 percent, and metal workers: -25 percent). Maybe these jobs aren’t “recession-proof.” But Abell agreed that despite mass layoffs and bad news, some people will continue to take risks and deliver innovation — hallmarks of companies like Microsoft and IBM. “Some pretty smart people have said that it’s in these times that incredible advances are made,” he said. “Ideas don’t know if the economy is bad.”
Blake Thorne is a senior at Western Michigan University.
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Comments
One more reason why those in the high tech sectors should unionize – before it’s too late for that industry.
David Sirota chronicles white collar tech union organizers in his book The Uprising.
— For Student Power - Feb 5, 02:03 PM - #Yes, sadly nothing is recession proof. Especially in a crisis of this magnitude. The next best thing though is working for the government or in higher education.
— J - Feb 5, 06:38 PM - #Many people are losing their job due to the current economic situation and as a result, unemployment continues to rise on its alarming rate. Many companies are considering the idea of cutting a vast number of their workforce in order to bring stability and suffice for the losses incurred as an effect of the recession. One of the prominent and most successful companies in the world is also facing these kind of dilemma including the Google Inc. Google is the dominant search engine, having overtaken Yahoo years ago. However, CEO Eric Schmidt has insisted that they have suffered along with everyone else during the downturn of the economy. Most of their revenue is generated through their advertising, like search ads that occur with searches on the website. Granted, they aren’t hurting as badly as other companies have been, but they have had to resort to layoffs and aren’t growing at as fast a pace as before.
— Google - Apr 30, 05:58 AM - #