Eclipse Job Stats

As I noted earlier this month, I've been working with a number of groups on how to measure and track the health of ecosystems (as well as their size). One of the indicators that I find interesting is Job posting data because it's a good measure of economic activity and value creation. If a technology is creating value, there should be growth in demand for skills in that technology. If a technology is failing to create value and it's easily subsitutable, then we should see decreasing demand.

Back in January 2006 I ran some stats on developer tools in the Java space using Dice.com which I prefer over monster because of it's strong technology focus which reduces "noise" in the data. Here is a comparison of the Jan 2006 and May 2007 numbers:

	Jan 2006	May 2007	Change
Eclipse	490	1209	Up 147%.
JDeveloper	95	169	Up 78%.
NetBeans + "Net Beans"	41	59.	Up 44%.
IntelliJ	27	63	Up 133%.

Another interesting site that shows data on a relative scale and incorporates a more global perspective is Indeed.com.



It's also interesting to compare "technology niches". Such as Swing development, Ajax development, or Mobile.


- Don