New report confirms IT&T jobs market down in March

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 08 April 2008 13:39

IT People - Enterprise

A newly released monthly report by an Australian based IT&T recruiter has reinforced yesterday's findings by the March Olivier Job Index that the technology jobs market is going through a downturn. The new report appears to quash hopes that the pessimistic outlook for both February and March in the Olivier reports were off target.

According to the Best IT Talent Index for March, published monthly by Best People Solutions, the IT&T jobs market decreased by a hefty 8%. Olivier yesterday reported a more modest contraction in March of 0.91%.

The agreement among the two recruiters that IT&T jobs growth has declined during March is in stark contrast to the February findings, when Olivier found that the market dropped by 7.11% while Best found that market had grown by 14.44%. The big difference, according to Olivier, was that it used seasonally adjusted figures in its report while Best used raw data.

"We have 8 years of data and every year we go back to the Time Series department at the Australian Bureau of Statistics and they recalibrate our number. We actually go the extra mile and get each sectors figures recalibrated not just the overall national data. You need 5 years of history – Best IT do not have this," Director of the Olivier Group, Robert Olivier told iTWire.

"If you look at the raw Olivier Job Index there is not a significant difference between the February 08 data. In February our IT job count was up 28.43% against Best IT’s 24%. Seasonally adjusted this came in as a negative figure – minus 7.11% because the average jump in February – because of seasonal factors - is far higher than this. E.g in Feb 07 the Olivier IT count was up 41.41% and 8.7% seasonally adjusted."

Now that the two recruiters are in agreement that there has been a jobs downturn, according to the latest report from Best: "Telecom Specialist and Hardware Engineers seem to be hardest hit with decreases of 29.76% and 22.03% respectively." In addition: "All sectors have recorded decreases except Trainers and Database Developers which have shown a small increase."

With both February and March exhibiting worrying signs for almost the entire IT&T jobs space, all eyes are now turned to April, which is being viewed as a critical month.