IT professionals still in high demand
The latest CareerJunction Index (CJI) report was released recently, giving a snapshot of the labour dynamics in South Africa by providing analysis of the relative ratio of supply and demand in the online job market.
According to the latest CareerJunction Index there was a decrease in labor demand in September 2009 across most industries in South Africa as well as an increase in labour supply. “Hence recruitment conditions are easing as recruiters have access to a growing pool of labour,” the report states.
IT & Engineering Jobs
Despite the decrease in labour demand and increase in labour supply it remains challenging to find skilled IT and Engineering employees.
Engineering and Information Technology has 7.07 and 7.23 potential career seekers per job advert respectively, well below other fields which typically had between 10 and 100 career seekers per job advert. IT and Engineering are in fact the two most challenging fields to recruit skilled staff, while it is the easiest to find employees for governmental and sport vacancies.
This relative shortage in suitable Engineering and IT employees may be interpreted as a sign of a growing job market in these fields, but this is not an accurate assumption. Over the last year the number of advertised Engineering vacancies decreased from 3371 per quarter to 1561 per quarter. The same trend was found in IT where the number of vacancies advertised fell from 6260 per quarter to 4200 per quarter.
“The Engineering sector has experienced a decline of 54% in job offerings over the last year,” the CJI report states. “With the economic downturn, a declining trend of job vacancies has become evident throughout the economy.”
“The Information Technology industry showed a steady level of labour demand at the end of last year, which was followed by a major drop in the beginning of 2009. The declining trend still continues, but has slowed down significantly at the end of the first quarter, 2009. Over the last year the IT field revealed a decline in labour demand of more than 20%.”
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