Horror year for IT jobs

The horror year for jobs in the Australian IT&T sector continued through December with a 6.8 per cent drop in job advertisements, bringing the decline over 12 months to 37 per cent, according to the Olivier Job Index (OJI).

The biggest drop in demand occurred in sales and management, software development and engineering, and the specialist areas of desktop support, and training and documentation.

The result was a marginal improvement on November, when the IT&T sector fell 7.6 per cent – compared to October’s 4.4 per cent dip and September’s 3.27 per cent fall.

The most recent OJI results showed across the national economy the job market recovered some confidence in December with a fall of 1.8 per cent, improving on the 9.8 per cent drop experienced in November.

However, throughout 2008 the IT&T sector performed poorly, falling 14 per cent more than the overall OJI, which finished down 22.98 per cent.

Late last year a Hudson recruitment report found IT&T employers unaffected by the current economic climate, but expectations had dipped and the focus had shifted to the passive job market. At the time Olivier predicted fierce competition between graduates in the New Year.

IT companies such as Data#3, UXC, Ericsson and Adobe have all cut local staff numbers.

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