Cybercities 2008 Report from the AeA - is this News?

The American Electronics Association (AeA) has released its big report on the state of the technology industry nationally, including its assessment of Washington State, which seems more designed to gain publicity than to enlighten its readers with meaningful insights about the regional labor market.

The recently released "Cybercities 2008" report tells us what happened in the technology labor force in the area in 2006, and that back in 2006 technology employment expanded by 6.5%. Whoopee! What happened in 2007 and in early to mid 2008? For that information, see our posts, below.

Reminds me of the AeA report that came out in the very early 2000s stating that the average tech worker in the Seattle area made well over $100k (I got a lot of interesting calls from AHRS technology clients after their people in their employ actively questioned why their pay was so far below the "average"). When AHRS and other compensation professionals challenged the AeA on their report, it was learned that Microsoft's pay and stock option gain data had a heavy influence on the data sample (and therefore the information reported was not terribly representative of the state of the "average" or typical tech worker at all). It did, however, gain a lot of publicity for the AeA.

On the positive side, there were a few interesting tidbits of information that came out from the 2008 report. As of 2006, the area had almost (not quite) caught up the all-time peak in tech employment reached early 2001. AHRS confidently predicts that we have now surpassed that mark, based on Microsoft's hiring in 2007, and the heavy demand for experienced high tech workers in general in 2007 and early 2008. (Even the most recent report from the WA State Employment Security Department showed technology employment increasing in the area in May 2008, despite most other employment groups being down, some significantly).

So, while the AeA report was interesting, it's hardly insightful or news to anyone who follows pay and labor market trends. See this link or several other sources for a summary of the AeA release.