IT&T jobs continue death spiral in November

Stan Beer
Monday, 08 December 2008 08:28

IT People - Enterprise

The IT&T jobs market continued its free fall across Australia in November, with the two largest eastern states, NSW and Victoria suffering large reductions in the number of jobs on offer, according to a new report. The November figures add to what has been a dismal 2008 for IT&T on the employment front with an end to the decline still nowhere in sight.

Unlike other sectors, the IT&T recruitment market never really recovered from its heights before the dot com bust at the beginning of this decade. However, the market had been steadily growing from a comparatively low base since 2003 - until the US-inspired economic downturn hit early this year.

According to the Oliver Job Index for November, published monthly by recruiter Olivier Group, the number of IT&T job ads for the month fell 7.6% seasonally adjusted compared to the previous month.

Data from Olivier, which tracks jobs advertised on the major Internet jobs boards, shows there has been a 30.5% fall in IT&T jobs over 12 months.

According to Olivier, Australia's two largest states have been particularly hard hit in the past month.

The most IT&T jobs are still in NSW (14,000 in November) although this figure was 12% down on October’s numbers.  Victoria was next in IT&T job market size with 6,300 job ads, which was a 16% fall on the volume in October.

Olivier Group director Robert Olivier, says businesses are cutting non-client facing, non revenue raising support roles so IT&T along with administration & clerical positions (down 21% in Nov) are targets for cut backs.

While IT&T fared badly, other sectors were worse last month and the overall Olivier Job Index fell 9.8% in November across the 16 industries surveyed. The bad news is that the 30.5% decline in IT&T jobs in the past year is much worse than the overall average yearly decline of 16.03%.

According to Robert Olivier, it is still too early to say whether recent interest cuts and Government financial stimulus measures will see a turnaround in 2009.

“We won’t really be able to judge until February. Employers traditionally return to the market near the end of January with fresh budgets and new year resolutions,” says Mr Olivier.

“We anticipate that job seekers will be back early."