Telecommunications ICT job advertisement numbers have grown an incredible average 3.38% per week since February this year, according to a recent jobs survey from telco consulting group Badja. What's more, the pace is expected to continue in 2005.

The strong growth of telecommunications ads also indicates the ratio of telco to IT numbers are shifting within the combined ICT sector. Where previously the ratio was in the order of 20% communications and 80% IT, the growth during the past year is now indicating a ratio of 25% communications and 75% IT.

According to the index, at times this year when the combined sector was showing growth of 2-3%, it was being supported by growth of up to 10% for the telco sector, indicating IT job ads numbers were not growing.

According to a release from Badja, a growing number of IT jobs now require a communications background, telco requirements are now placing IT jobs under pressure. This requirement has been fuelled by the unprecedented growth in IP Telephony in the corporate sector. Further growth and pressure can be expected from video conferencing and video telephony both over IP.

According to the Badja report, we can expect continued strong growth right up to the week preceding Christmas. Job numbers are expected to quickly return to high numbers by the 3rd to 4th week of January 2005.

Badja continues to see a wide variety jobs advertisements repeated many times for some positions indicating a shortage of some employees with the required job skills. There is a very large increase in positions requiring staff with a VoIP background, indicating a huge push to commercialise the product by a wide variety of carriers and ISPs. Other supporting roles requiring some technical knowledge such as site acquisition are also remaining hard to fill.

The index can be accessed at http://www.badja.com