Originally published in Intercom, January 2003 issue. Reprinted with permission,

Trends 2003: Employment Trends in Technical Communication

by Saul Carliner

What do employment trends look like for the coming year? Overall, employment will remain tight through 2003, and finding a marketable balance between technical and communication skills will challenge many technical communicators. But bright spots for employment do exist, and the long-term outlook continues to be healthy.

2002 was a Tough Year. 2003 Will Be, Too

Although economists once predicted that employment would pick up in the last quarter of 2002 and continue to improve in 2003, an examination of U.S. employment reports from the summer suggests that employment could remain soft for a while. U.S. government hiring has accounted for nearly all job growth in the third quarter. Private firms remain cautious, as the economy continues to sputter and business markets are skittish about the prospect of a war with Iraq. Economists believe that job prospects will improve only when private firms increase hiring.

Furthermore, because the U.S. economy is the largest in the world and many economies depend on trade with the United States, a slowdown in this country has ripple effects throughout the world. This is certainly true in most of the countries with strong STC chapters, such as Canada, France, Israel, and Singapore.

Traditional Job Sources Weaken

Over the past decade, the telecommunications, the PC, software development, and services industries have provided the strongest sources of employment for technical communicators. Looking ahead, the economic data for these industries are not encouraging.

The worldwide telecommunications industry still suffers from a glut of capacity, limiting funds available for capital investment, which fuels research and development and related technical communication activities. Furthermore, the practical fallout from accounting scandals in companies such as Worldcom and Qwest is that these companies cannot afford high-priced routers and other telecommunications equipment. So telecommunications firms cannot invest in R&D and, by extension, technical communication.

The PC industry has reached maturity, meaning that growth has slowed, so employment would be tough even in a good economy. That slow growth, in turn, limits the research and development activities that typically fuel employment opportunities. Use of handheld computers is growing, but no “killer apps” have emerged, so opportunities remain tight in that industry, too.

Even software development remains weak. According to some press reports, many organizations are postponing software projects, especially complex applications for internal use in large organizations, which further minimizes opportunities for technical communicators.

Many software development projects for internal applications were once performed by large services firms. But clients of these firms are scaling back or canceling contracts. In some instances, they are cutting back on the projects to reduce costs; but in other cases, they are scaling back contracts to insource--that is, to bring work back in-house that they had contracted out in the past. That translates to fewer opportunities for technical communication firms.

Bright Spots

Defense, government, security, health care, and training all have decent prospects. For example, a recent study by the American Society for Training and Development found that organizations are holding onto training staff and dollars even as they cut back elsewhere. As managed care organizations return to profitability (many teetered on the brink of bankruptcy after Medicaid funding dropped a couple years ago) and as the U.S. Healthcare Portability Act takes effect (along with related software and paperwork), possibilities exist for increased employment. Finally, as mentioned earlier, the federal government is increasing its payroll, mostly in response to the growth of homeland security and related activities. This expansion should provide opportunities for technical communicators, too.

Work Does Exist

Technical communicators do seem to be finding work. Although they are not finding work as quickly as they did during the boom years and although some of the assignments might not challenge them as much as those in the past, most technical communicators whom I have known to be on the job market have found positions after a few months. Our colleagues in European countries (some of which face double-digit unemployment) are also finding positions.

Our situation is better than that of some other branches of communications, which are having an especially difficult time. Because of the depression in the advertising field (considered by some to be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s), many copywriters and graphic designers are unable to find work at all. Early this fall, an interesting discussion emerged on the Web site of the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA) (www.aiga.org) about performing work "on spec"; that is, proposing a nearly completed design in the hope that it will sell. AIGA guidelines are clear: This is not an ethical practice. Design work should be paid for. But work is so scarce that most designers (at least among those who contributed to the discussion) said it was worth the risk.

The Biggest Challenges

Employed technical communicators face two major challenges in maintaining strong employment.

The first is keeping a broad focus on communication with the intended audience. It's easy to get sucked into the “tools jockey” syndrome, but that limits our skill set to those that can be easily picked up by anyone who has access to RoboHelp and DreamWeaver. When the skills are scarce, salaries go up, as they did in the late 1990s and 2000. But when the skills become widely available (as they are now), salaries deflate, employment opportunities plummet, and career growth screeches to a halt, because employers perceive these workers as having a limited set of skills. In contrast, the ability to connect with the intended audience allows technical communicators to broaden their perspective to advising on software interfaces, user experiences, and other product issues.

The second challenge is linking the work of technical communication to the broader needs of the business, which requires a broader understanding of business. The more tangibly and persuasively technical communicators can make the business case for our work and demonstrate a tangible return, the stronger the interest in technical communication among top executives. That interest, in turn, enhances job and career opportunities. But unless we can make that case, companies may perceive our work as a “frill” for which they receive little value.

So What?

What does all this mean for you? If you'd like to change jobs but have one that you can tolerate, 2003 is probably not a good year to make a change. The number of applicants will exceed the number of jobs. But if you do find yourself on the job market in the coming year, consider focusing your employment search on the bright spots in the field. If you don’t have direct qualifications, see what you can do to build them.

If you’re a manager of technical communicators, you can best weather the economic downturn by balancing the publishing and technical skills required in your departments. To ensure the brightest long-term prospects for your current staff, make sure that you tilt the scales toward durable skills that require the ability to communicate technical content to a designated audience, not production skills that anyone can pick up in a week with the right software.

Current belt-tightening trends notwithstanding, long-term career opportunities remain solid. Despite the current downturn in employment, economists still believe that prospects for skilled professionals, especially those with technology skills, remain strong and even predict shortages of skills.

It’s partly a demographic thing: As baby boomers begin retiring (some are eligible now), a population drop in the next generation means there are fewer people to replace them. For example, 50 percent of the federal workforce is eligible to retire in the next five years, opening many senior positions.

But it’s also an economic thing. As countries in Asia and Eastern Europe continue to develop, their growth will fuel the world economy. And the more we can help our organizations succeed internationally and develop profitable products that engender strong loyalty, the more likely we, too, are to have bright futures.

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(c) Copyright. 2003. Saul Carliner. All rights reserved.