IT Jobs Will Grow 22% Through 2020, Says U.S.

The expansion of healthcare technology and mobile networks in the U.S. will increase demand for software developers, support technicians, and systems analysts so much so that by 2020, employment in all computer occupations is expected to increase by 22 percent, according to the biennial update of employment projections by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Demand for software developers will be the strongest during this period, with increases reaching as high as 32 percent, depending on the type of software developed. Demand for database administrators is expected to increase 31 percent, while employment for information technology (IT) managers is projected to increase 18 percent by 2020. Growth in the healthcare industry and the need for more IT security may spur an increase in the number IT management jobs, and "cloud computing may shift some IT services to computer systems design and related services firms, concentrating jobs in that industry," according to BLS. Employment for computer systems analysts is expected to grow by 22 percent, demand for computer programmers will increase just 12 percent, BLS predicts, which notes it is the occupation most vulnerable to offshoring.

Average Teen Sends, Receives 60 Texts a Day

Get ready for a shocker: A new survey found that teenagers are texting more nowadays than they did just a few years ago.

The survey of 799 U.S. teens ages 12 to 17 years old, released Monday by the Pew Research Center, found that the typical teen sends and receives 60 text messages a day, up from 50 in 2009. Overall, 75 percent of all American teenagers text.

"Teens are fervent communicators," Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist with the Pew Internet Project, wrote in a report about the survey findings. "Straddling childhood and adulthood, they communicate frequently with a variety of important people in their lives: friends and peers, parents, teachers, coaches, bosses, and a myriad of other adults and institutions."

When it comes to how they communicate with those people, 63 percent of teens say they text every day, while 39 percent talk on their cell phone, 35 percent socialize face-to-face outside of school, and 29 percent message on social networks. Twenty-two percent of teens instant message every day, while 19 percent talk on landlines and just 6 percent email.

And while teens still talk on the phone, they are calling their friends less frequently, the survey found. Fourteen percent of teens say they talk with their friends on a landline every day, down from 30 percent in 2009. Another 20 percent say they talk daily on their cell phone with friends, down from 38 percent three years ago.

Older female teens are the "most enthusiastic texters," sending 100 texts a day in 2011, on average, compared to just 50 for males the same age, according to the survey.

Meanwhile, the survey also found that about one in four teens now owns a smartphone. Twenty-three percent of all those ages 12 to 17 say they have a smartphone, with ownership highest among older teens. Thirty-one percent of those ages 14 to 17 say they have a smartphone, compared to just 8 percent of those ages 12 and 13.

Google Effects on Memory

"The advent of the Internet, with sophisticated algorithmic search engines, has made accessing information as easy as lifting a finger. No longer do we have to make costly efforts to find the things we want. We can "Google" the old classmate, find articles online, or look up the actor who was on the tip of our tongue. The results of four studies suggest that when faced with difficult questions, people are primed to think about computers and that when people expect to have future access to information, they have lower rates of recall of the information itself and enhanced recall instead for where to access it. The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves." From: SCIENCE: The World's Leading Journal of Original Scientific Research, Global News & Commentary.

Why many fresh college grads don't get hired?

Four of ten fresh graduates and young jobseekers are not hired because they lack three key qualities—critical thinking, initiative, and effective communication skills—according to the People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP) at a job fair in Makati on Friday (March 2, 2012).