The IT field in the area, including San Diego web designers, has not come through the Great Recession totally unscathed; there have been some jobs losses. However, an August 2011 study indicates that San Diego IT and web design firms have helped to grow the local economy in the last 18 months.
According to this study by the National University System Institute for Policy Research, there are approximately 6,000 IT/web design employers in the area. This accounts for about six percent of all the companies working in the region, including San Diego web designers.
The study also indicated that there are approximately 125 web design firms in the region that employ about 1,232 San Diego web designers. This is an increase of about 8% from 2007. This is quite an impressive increase in the number of San Diego web designers and web development workers, given how deep the Great Recession has been.
The Institute did note that some San Diego web designers and other high tech workers did depart the area. Part of the reason this occurs traditionally is that San Diego is often viewed as more of a ‘beach town,’ and some workers gravitate towards Silicon Valley. It has been noted by some San Diego HR firms that when an IT/web design professional graduates from college, they always get offers from Google or Facebook and leave town. Sometimes it can be more difficult for this area to compete with Silicon Valley. The salaries there are higher, and the Valley simply attracts people because it is perceived as ‘the center of the action’ by so many in high tech fields. As such, it can be a challenge sometimes for successful firms here, such as Arselin Media, to attract workers.
Interestingly, those 6,000 firms employ a startling 139,450 workers. That accounts for a whopping 11.5% of the entire workforce in San Diego in 2010, including San Diego web designers. The Institute estimated – using a standard economic model – that the city’s IT industry was responsible indirectly for 104,545 other jobs in 2010, and induced an additional 121,430 jobs. The total is about 365,000 IT/web development-dependent jobs. This represents about 30 percent – or about 1/3 – of all employment opportunities in this area.
The study showed that the salaries and benefits paid by IT and web development companies in the area have had a major effect on the local economy in the last three years. The statistics showed that the average worker salary, of people employed directly by IT firms, in this area was at $92,103 in 2010. This is more than 100% more than the $44,000 average annual salary paid by firms that are not involved in technology. As you can see, many workers would be better served to be San Diego web designers or in other high tech positions.
A deeper analysis of the study revealed that San Diego web designers have actually done fairly well in the economic downturn. The average annual salary of full time web designers and web developers is $68,323. This is an increase of 5% from 2007. Given the fact that the salaries of so many workers are stagnant, being in the group San Diego web designers is solid way to make a living.
As far as total labor income that is produced directly by IT and web development jobs, it reached $16 billion in 2010. The study also discovered that another $9 billion was created by indirect and/or induced labor wages. So, the total income generated in IT and web development was an impressive $25 billion in 2010. Further, the study showed that San Diego web designers contributed $560 million in labor income for the area. The types of web designer and developer jobs that produced this income were impressive. Some of the jobs noted in the survey for San Diego web designers included:
- Web front end developer
- Web developers for Cold Fusion, Javascript, DHTML, XML
- Mobile web developer
- PHP web developer
- Web developer for ASP, SQL Server, SW
- Java developer
- LAMP, CSS, HTML, Drupal, Jquery developer
As mentioned earlier, there is no question that the IT sectors in San Diego did contribute to the loss of jobs experienced in the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009. This helped to cause the high unemployment rate that still stands at 9.2% in October 2011. Also, the downturn has contributed to a California unemployment that has soared to 12%.
Still, IT and web development employment in the region has actually help up a great deal better than the job market overall in the country. The study indicates that employment in the majority of high tech sectors had gone back to 2007, pre recession levels by 2010. The only exception to this was in the fields of computer and electronics manufacturing. These declined 9% from 12,400 to 11,300 throughout the area.
There definitely was a dip in the number of San Diego web designers and web developers in the middle of the recession in 2009. However, as mentioned earlier, the numbers of San Diego web designers and design shops has been on the upswing in recent months. This is definitely an encouraging sign for high tech workers. It also indicates that perhaps the economy is beginning to pick up. The reason this could be the case is that companies tend to spend more on advertising and their websites when the economy begins to pick up. Hopefully, companies are beginning to see an increase in their business prospects in 2011.
One of the firms that we contacted, Arselin Media, experienced a reduction of web designers and web developers in 2007 and 2008. However, in 2010, Arselin Media and other firms in the area have increased their hiring by an impressive 4%.
In addition to San Diego web designers, other fields have done fairly well in the recession. Some of these include biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. In fact, there has been an increase of almost 18% in the county during the recession. That is, there has been an increase from 17,000 jobs in 2007 to 21,300 jobs in 2010.
In the study cited above, the Institute studied the economic trends of 8 high tech and IT sectors in the region, including San Diego web designers. It was based upon the standard US government job classification system.
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