ICT jobs market tentatively on road to recovery

Peter Dinham
Monday, 26 October 2009 12:20

IT People - Recruitment

The ICT jobs market in Australia is already emerging from the financial downturn with Candle ICT, in its September Clarius Index, forecasting that a recovery in the market is likely within the next six months.

According to Candle, a backlog of ICT projects within financial services and telecommunications helped soften the employment downturn during the September quarter, in a further sign a recovery was no more than six months away.
 
Candle ICT chief executive, David Stewart, says that while the Index showed that demand and supply of ICT workers was now almost level after several quarters of oversupply, a sustained national recovery in the ICT jobs market may not kick in until March/April next year.

Stewart says that the Clarius Skills Index, the only measure of underlying demand and supply of skilled labour, fell by a marginal 0.3 points to 99.3 in the computing professionals category – the second consecutive quarter in which the Index fell at a slower rate than the previous three months.

“A score of 100 indicates equal tension between labour supply and demand. Anything greater than 105 on the skills shortage side of the Index is regarded as extreme. A score of 95 to 98 is moderate.

“In the June quarter, labour demand was estimated to be approximately 400 jobs below the estimated labour supply. This gap has increased slightly to a difference of approximately 500 jobs in the September quarter.

“We are bouncing along the bottom at the moment. You’ll see bursts of demand in some sectors or States in different months but while there are early signals of a recovery we are yet to experience it.”

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