US software industry lost 16% of the jobs between 2001 and 2004

Associated Press in its story on programming jobs losing luster in the US and at American universities, quotes some statistics on the state of the industry. The US software industry lost 16% of its jobs from March 2001 to March 2004, Economic Policy Institute found. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that information technology industries laid off more than 7,000 American workers in Q1 2005. According to the most recent data from the National Science Foundation, 1.2 million of the world's 2.8 million university degrees in science and engineering in 2000 were earned by Asian students in Asian universities, with only 400,000 granted in the United States.