The American information technology has lost nearly 403,300 jobs between March 2001 and April 2004. Interestingly, nearly half of these jobs disappeared after the Federal Government in November 2001, officially declared that recession was over.

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According to a recent study, 200,300 IT jobs were lost after November 2001, with San Francisco Bay Area taking the largest hit in percentage terms. IT industry employment in the San Francisco region dropped 49 per cent between March 2001 and April 2004 to 28,000.

The San Jose metropolitan region saw some of the sharpest declines in the number of IT jobs. The IT industry employment fell from its peak of 92,500 in March 2001 to 61,900 in April 2004, a loss of 30,600 jobs. The loss of jobs did not stop with the end of the recession, the region lost 14,000 jobs after November 2001.

The study, which was released last week, was made by researchers at the Center for Urban Economic Development.

Officials from the Center have argued that the job losses resulted from several factors, including shift of work to low-cost nations and the use of H-1B visas, which can be used to import computer programmers and other skilled workers.

The study said these numbers may not reflect all IT job losses, because data for certain sectors of the IT industry aren't available for several regions.