Software services industry added more than 5,000 jobs The American Electronics Association (AeA) has put a number on the job losses suffered by high-tech workers over the last two years, reporting that about 560,000 jobs have been lost from the height of the dot-com era.The majority of those positions were lost in the manufacturing, according to a press release Wednesday. That sector shed 415,300 jobs from January 2001 to December 2002, a 20 percent decrease. High-tech manufacturing companies were described as PC and server vendors, semiconductor companies, consumer electronics companies, and medical equipment makers, said William Archey, president and chief executive officer of the AeA, based in Washington, D.C.The decline in manufacturing jobs was one of the biggest surprises of the survey, as the AeA did not expect such a steep decline in this sector, Archey said. The number of workers in communications services positions, such as telecommunications workers, decreased by 135,300 jobs, or 9.2 percent. “The telecom sector remains very moribund, with almost everything in wireless or telecommunications taking a big hit,” he said.On the other hand, the software services industry managed to add 5,300 jobs. Companies like SAP and Oracle comprise the software services industry, which reflects the increased importance of enterprise software to corporations, the report said.The AeA is a trade association made up of over 3,000 high-tech companies. The data used in this report was taken from reports submitted to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Technology Industry