Sunday, November 14, 2010

Boston Market | November 2010

Here are two reasons why Bostonians should be optimistic about employment prospects:

  • Boston ranks #2 in overall job creation over the past 12 months
  • Boston ranks #5 (tie) in job opportunities per unemployed worker

NOTE: Factoring in population size, Boston drops from #2 to #13 in overall job creation as many smaller markets outperformed Boston on a percentage basis. The only larger metropolitan area to outperform Boston was Washington, DC.

If you live outside the Boston metro area, check out the rankings for your home town:

Top 20 Web Technologies

Drilling deeper, what does the job market look like for workers with Web technology skills?

The monthly listing of Top 20 Web Technologies in Boston has been updated and appears in the right-hand column. The list is ordered by how many times that technology was mentioned in job descriptions at Boston.com (managed by Monster.com). As expected, programming and database skills dominate the list.

To add a new twist this month, let's explore emerging programming skills.

The Magnificent Seven

InfoWorld published an article entitled 7 Programming Languages on the Rise. Dice provides a compact summary listing the languages as follows (links to Wikipedia):

An analysis of the market demand for these programming skills reveals the following opportunities in the Boston marketplace:

** NOTE: Searching on "R" offers up too many false positives, such as nursing jobs (RN).

So, the major players in this shootout are as follows:

  • JavaScript (286)
  • Python (116)
  • MATLAB (79)
  • Ruby (52)

MATLAB is not used in Web applications, R is a mystery in the marketplace, and Erlang and COBOL offer few job opportunities.

Therefore, Web professionals should consider beefing up their filmography by adding one or more of the following character roles to help boost box office clout:

[ NOTE: Facebook Fans of Beantown Web receive periodic value-added content. Become a fan today! ]

Posted by at