James Riley
Tuesday, 08 September 2009 19:24
IT People -
Enterprise
The number of job advertisements in the Australian market grew during August for the first time since May last year, according to the latest data from recruitment specialist Olivier Group.
Seasonally adjusted, the long-running Olivier Job Index was up nearly
2.5 per cent in August. And although it remains 48 per cent lower than
this time last year, the company says the market has finally returned to growth, and the trend is positive.
"We feel that the trend has been clearly emerging for the past five
months and is not a one off," Olivier says in its Australian Market
Report for August. "Likewise the business confidence surveys suggest
increased optimism."
Olivier Group director Robert Olivier said the August upswing in Job
Ads follows a distinct trend – with a slowing of the decline over
several months, then stabilising in July.
"We hoped job ads bottomed out in July," Olivier said. "August's
figures added weight to that hope. We'd expect to see more economists
revising peak unemployment predictions downwards."
Strangely, the IT sector – which grew at a healthy 7 per cent clip in July – fell away marginally, down about 1 per cent.
But underpinning the rebound has been the sectors that had been hurting
most during the GFC – financial services and banking, which fell first
and fastest – have bounced back the best, up nearly three per cent in
the month.
"Job creation has turned a corner,” Olivier Group director Robert
Olivier said. “We won't know when we'll see a net increase in
employment. But for job seekers this is a welcome change."
There were big positive swings in part time jobs (up 10.8 per cent) and
casual work (up 11.5 per cent). And allaying fears of
'underemployment', full time jobs also grew.
Olivier said another sign of the growing confidence in the economy was
the increase during August of more than 14 per cent in the number of
Administrative, Clerical and Office jobs.
"Our figures show that the significant growth here is in Personal
Assistant and Executive Assistant positions, suggesting managers have
had enough of cutting back and now feel the confidence to look for
help," Olivier said.