Ask HN: Measuring the IT job market using Craiglist and Dice job postings

I'd like to ask you all about what you have experienced & seen on Craiglist and Dice that would give you an idea on how good or bad the IT job market is or was. I hear conflicting stories of qualified people not able to find jobs after a year of searching and on the flip side, of companies not able to find people (the so-called 'IT talent shortage').

I used both websites on & off since the late 90s to find contract & permanent full-time jobs. Back then at the height of the dot-coms, the Dice home page showed 120,000+ jobs, right after the crash (2001-2003) that number fell to around 20,000-30,000. Now it's around 80,000.

On Craigslist, at the dot com height, the Software section for the Bay Area (https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/sof) had so many job postings per day that the list of postings for that day would spill over to the next page (there are 100 listings per page). Now, there's only a handful of postings per day.

I'd like to get an idea of the IT job market's fluctuation over the years by compiling these data points. I did a Google search for charts with these data points but couldn't find any. If any of you used these two sites anytime from the late 90s to today and remember the # of postings for that specific date or time period, please post it here. Ideally, I'd like to get month to month data with high interest on data points from 1999-2003 and 2006 to today.

Thank you.