"Affirmative action is not as common or as prevalent in the technology industry," he said. "The African-American sales professional or tech-support specialist (are first) when it comes to being laid off."

Numbers bear him out.

A newly released study issued by the Coalition for Fair Employment in Silicon Valley, a group of black executives, found that nine high-tech fields employed 211,000 black workers out of 3.8 million, or 5.5 percent, compared with the general African-American labor force percentage of 10.6 percent.

The coalition noted that other information-based, technology-driven industries, such as telecommunications and radio and television broadcasting, employ far higher percentages of blacks--13.9 percent and 15.4 percent, respectively.