IT job creation bucks up US economy

Other sectors slacking

By Timothy Morgan

The US economy added more jobs than economists had been expecting in July, according to a report released Friday from the Department of Labor, and the IT sector did its part to push up the numbers once again as it has since the beginning of the Great Recession five years ago.

According to the July jobs report (PDF), the private sector (not including farm workers or government employees) added 172,000 workers in July, a relatively big bounce after months of meager job gains. Local, state, and federal governments continued to shed workers, down 9,000 in the quarter by the math of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS compiles worker rolls at businesses every month to see the ups and downs by industry as well as doing a survey of American households to calculate the unemployment rate. the July numbers indicate the net number of workers added to the nation's payrolls rose by 163,000.

However, it will take a lot more than this to knock down the unemployment rate, and a little bit more to just keep pace with population growth in the US. Economists say that given the current population level and growth rate, the US economy should be adding something on the order of 200,000 jobs a month just to absorb new workers as they enter the labor force. And to knock down the number of unemployed people, which stands at 12.8 million, and therefore the official unemployment rate, the economy would have to add two, three, or four times that many workers over a long period of time. At the rate of job growth in July, it would take about 3.5 years to get the unemployment rate back down to the 4.5 per cent level of structural unemployment that persisted ahead of the Great Recession. And you would have to add those 200,000 jobs per month on top of that to keep up with population growth.

Unemployment rate in the US over time

Back in December 2007, when the Great Recession officially started, the unemployment rate was 5 per cent and there were 7.6 million workers looking for jobs. That unemployment remains high does not paint a pretty picture, particularly for the Obama Administration, which is trying to keep its job in November when the election comes around.

The way the math worked out this time in the July 2012 report, the worker pool shrank a bit in – meaning people stopped looking for work and are therefore not officially counted as being unemployed – and therefore the unemployment rate ticked up a bit to 8.3 per cent. While this is better than 10 per cent unemployment, as the economy in the States was wrestling with in late 2009, it is still an unacceptably high share of workers thrown out of jobs and one that will probably persist until the European zone fixes its issues and the United States sorts out its own. In other words, maybe this is the new reality and maybe structural unemployment is at a new – and higher – permanent level.

If you add in those who are working part time and those only "marginally attached to the labor force," as the BLS puts it, then the unemployment rate (meaning those who cannot find full-time work but who want it) is running 15.2 per cent right now.

July jobs growth in the US is almost the bare minimum needed

As in months past, manufacturers, healthcare providers, and companies engaged in professional and business services of various kinds were the big drivers in job growth. Manufacturers added 25,000 workers last month, with the auto industry and its parts suppliers leading the way and having far fewer layoffs than is typical in the summer months. Healthcare companies of all stripes added 12,000 net new workers last month, and professional and business services firms added 49,000 employees.
The BLS also revised the number of jobs it thinks were created in May and June. After sharpening its pencils, the bureau now believes the US economy added only 64,000 net jobs in May (down from 80,000) and added 87,000 in June (up from 77,000).

IT-related industries

You can't actually figure out what jobs are coming and going each quarter because the BLS doesn't track jobs by type but rather by industry. But El Reg drills into the IT-related industries, using the raw and not seasonally adjusted data, each month to come up with a proxy for IT job growth or shrinkage.
In the manufacturing sector, companies making computers and electronics added a net 1,000 new workers in July, to over 1.11 million, with those making computers and related peripherals adding 800 people, to reach 167,200. After slashing workers for years, those making communications gear have been adding employees in recent months, and added 900 workers in July, to 110,200 total workers. Semiconductor and electronic components makers slashed 2,200 workers, to 387,400 people, and those making electronic instruments shed 100 people, to 403,600.

In what the BLS calls the information sector, which includes all kinds of publishing – books, periodicals, movies, broadcasting, telecom, and hosting – jobs rose by 6,000 to 2.65 million workers. Within this sector, telecom companies added 2,100 workers, to 831,900, and data processing and hosting companies added 600 workers, to 242,700.

Professional and business services was the big job creator during the recovery in the United States, and continues to drive jobs. The sub-sector comprised of companies that are engaged in computer systems design and related services added a very helpful 12,300 workers in July, pushing the pool of workers up to 1.61 million. Those companies peddling management and technical consulting services, which often have an IT component, added 8,800 people in July, to reach 1.15 million total workers across the country.

Headhunter Challenger, Gray & Christmas not only watches the monthly BLS report very closely, but tracks officially announced job cuts in the United States through filings that are required by many states if job cuts reach a certain threshold. Through the end of July, employers in the US have officially announced 319,946 job cuts, according to a report put out by the headhunter last Friday. The computer industry – which includes computer and electronics makers and telecom companies according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas – has officially given out 35,006 pink slips to date, more than triple the amount of a year ago, driven predominantly by the 27,000 job cuts that Hewlett-Packard said it would be making back in May. Of course, not all of those cuts will be done in the United States, so be careful with this data. 

Get Loopy With These Digital Mixing Tricks

 

Of course, Glass is quite recent in the long history of musical looping. Meditative, pulsating, and oftentimes trance-inducing rhythms are about as old as breathing itself. Though not necessarily novel, 20th-century composers embarked on a never-ending cycle to break the chains of the 12-tone plateau. In doing so, composers including Glass, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, and many others elevated the possibilities of looping towards an impossible limit. Robert Fripp invented his analog Flippertronics, a guitar and tape delay setup, in 1979, though the accessibility of digital machines has since marked looping as somewhat of a musical norm. Stuck in an antiquated Ouroboros? This how-to just might help you jump the track.

There is pretty bad joke that begins with "Knock, knock. Who's there?" and is followed by "Philip Glass. Philip Glass who?" Instead of the typical and expected knock-knock conclusion, however, the joke works only if the initial interlocutor then repeats her initial question, thus dooming the responder to an endless, enclosed, and dorky loop that honors the famed minimalist composer, renowned for his work with repetition. With growing frustration and waning enthusiasm, the iteration changes, evolving beyond the simple-mindedness of its own content, and becoming a sort of commentary on the incessant existence of knock-knock jokes in general.

John Flanagan, a freelance writer in Vermont, wrote this article was written by John Flanagan, a freelance writer in Vermont, wrote this article was written by John Flanagan, a freelance writer in Vermont.

Contents  [hide] 1 A Little Loopy 1.1 How It Works 2 The Piecemeal Loop 2.1 How It Works 3 Erase Head 3.1 How It Works

A Little Loopy

Ben Maddox of the bands Farm and Mouthbreather says finding Loopy, an iOS app, culminated his years of searching for the right audio looper. At $2.99 for the iPhone-only Loopy, and just $7.99 for the spruced-up, iPhone/iPad-compatible Loopy HD, Maddox's find clocks in as perhaps the most inexpensive highly-functional digital looping utility. According to its introductory video, Loopy works like “a musical notepad,” giving loopers six, nine, or twelve tracks on which to record their own loops. Users can also import preexisting loops via iTunes. For musicians lacking confidence in their own rhythmic timing, Loopy packs a dynamic time shifting feature to ease the responsibility of syncopation – though the audio and visual metronome makes timing a no-brainer for even the most maladroit looper. Imported tracks may also be scaled automatically to match any particular project's time signature.

Though Loopy works well for home studio session recording, Maddox uses the app live via an Alesis iO Dock and external MIDI footswitch.

How It Works

To begin using Loopy, set your project's tempo by recording your first loop. Make sure there are no gaps in the loop, so that it repeats without hiccups. You can also preset a tempo and have Loopy count loops in and out for you. Set how long you want your loop to be using the master clock length controls. After adjusting the first track to seamless perfection, any loops you add will stay in time automatically. Watch Maddox operate Loopy with masterful alacrity in this Mouthbreather performance of their song “Equa.”

The Piecemeal Loop

Steve Hadeka, a Burlington, VT-based drummer, recently deconstructed how he prepared a live cover of Faith Evans' “Love Like This Before” for Heloise & the Savior Faire. “In order to get the song sounding just right,” he says, “I wanted to make a loop of percussion to play along with.” By adding a small piano lick to the loop, Hadeka liberated the band's keyboard player to focus on vocals and dancing.

How It Works

Hadeka began his process by finding Evans' song on YouTube and determining its key and beats per minute (BPM). He simulated the audio using the “Musical Typing” feature in GarageBand, and then found triangle, shaker, hi-hat, and other percussion sounds to construct the loop's foundation in a four-bar cycle. Hadeka added Evans' song's signature piano riff to his track, and layered in other effects, such as reverb and delay, “to give it a more vintage feel.” Not completely satisfied with GarageBand's vintage sound selection, Hadeka ventured to www.freesound.org for some royalty-free sound samples. He found a perfect scratchy old record sound and imported the .WAV file to GarageBand. Next, he loaded the completed track to a Roland SPD-SX Sampling Pad via its USB-connected Wave Manager. Because the loop was mapped at a particular BPM, he simply set the Sampling Pad to match the rhythm, thus enabling him to send a click track back to his headphones for the live performance.

Erase Head

Son of Salami may freak out the untrained ear, but keener listeners will detect a loop-prone mind that falls someplace between William Basinski and Ariel Pink. On his website, on his tapes, and during his live shows, Mr. Salami, AKA Joey Pizza Slice, explains how he creates his analog loops. To begin, he simply yanks the erase heads out of generic tape recorders – found in abundance at a thrift store near you.

How It Works

The Erase Head.

Erase heads apply a high-amplitude, high-frequency AC magnetic field to cassette tapes in order to erase any recorded content before the tape passes over the record head. By ripping the erase head out, the record head will layer new material over what's already been recorded, “much like multiple exposures with a camera,” Joey says.

To find the erase head, hit eject and locate a small metal lever in the top left corner of the mechanism's insides. Press the lever down while holding Record and Play simultaneously. The erase head should then pop up. Joey recommends a steak knife for proper removal.

The limits of this primitive process are many, though they foster uncontrolled and often happy accidents. The looper can't adjust the volume of each individual track, and sounds become more compressed and sometimes quieter with more than a few loops layered onto one small space of tape. Fun tricks allow for endless experimentation, such as Joey's proclivity to record a track while pressing Fast Forward. The audio will sound normal only when the tape is sped up, thus producing long, droning noises that Joey says sound like “big bass rumbles.” “This is a fun trick for leaving subliminal messages in songs,” he adds. Joey often compliments his audio mashups with a likeminded video mélange, as exemplified in the very weird, and brilliant, “Fresh Baguettes.”