Wednesday, September 15, 2004

"Fewer can afford college in state" (Captial Times)

With respect to our brief discussion of the "digital divide" film from Monday, comes this disturbing statistic reported in today's Capital Times:

A decade ago, 30 of every 100 people age 18 to 24 from minority ethnic groups were enrolled in college in Wisconsin; now only 16 of 100 are.

If college, and not tech skills, truly is the more reliable stepping stone to a "high tech career" (whatever that is), then we have cause to worry here in the Badger State.

The Capital Times

"High - Tech Market Has Lost 400, 000 Jobs" (NYT)

Interesting article today from the Associated Press in the NYT:

The U.S. information tech sector lost 403,300 jobs between March 2001 and this past April, and the market for tech workers remains bleak, according to a new report.

Perhaps more surprising, just over half of those jobs -- 206,300 -- were lost after experts declared the recession over in November 2001, say the researchers from the University of Illinois-Chicago.

In all, the researchers said, the job market for high-tech workers shrank by 18.8 percent, to 1,743,500 over the period studied. [...]

The report, funded by the Ford Foundation, was conducted for the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers, a Seattle organization that wants to unionize workers at Microsoft Corp. and other technology companies.


The New York Times > AP > Technology > High - Tech Market Has Lost 400, 000 Jobs: