Analysts: Jobs in abundance in 2010
- 09 December, 2009 12:15
- Comments 1
Industry representatives are predicting rapid hiring increases in 2010, especially in services roles, but the skills shortages will again become an issue.
A survey of over 2000 Australian employers for the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey found a 19 per cent net employment outlook, up 8 per cent on the last quarter. This figure is due to an increase in employers planning to hire (26 per cent), and a fall in the number planning to decrease hiring (7 per cent).
Hiring expectations were strongest in the services sector (up 24 per cent) including ICT services. The overall percentage puts Australia in sixth place globally behind India, Brazil, Singapore, Taiwan and Costa Rica. It was also far ahead of the US, UK and France, which showed little or no hiring improvement rates.
Manpower managing director, Lincoln Crawley, said strong services growth could be attributed in part to overall market growth.
“As confidence comes back into the market and hiring increases across the board, services are required to support that,” he said. “The trend away from fixed to variable costs is also a factor.”
Into 2010, Crawley said the boom in growth will settle and hiring patterns should return back to a sense of normalcy, but the skills shortage would reemerge.
“Specialist skills are in hot demand,” Crawley said. “The skills shortage never really disappeared, but it did become more specialised – we will see organisations more willing to take on people with most, but not all, of the criteria required for a role.
“Those organisations have shown a greater interest in working with staff to train them properly. I anticipate a higher range of skills in demand overall in 2010.”
Meanwhile, a study by recruitment specialist, Randstad, found the job market had been improving for the past six months, and expected it to continue to do so into the new year. The report also claimed verticals such as banking and financing, hit hardest by the effects of the downturn, are showing strong signs of recovery and IT jobs in those areas are growing rapidly.
In a release, Randstad’s IT operations director, Malcolm Dunford, said the outlook for the first quarter in 2010 was positive.
“Jobs for contract workers, in particular, will see and increase as companies look to ease the labour pressures being felt this year and hire staff to cope with a demanding work schedule,” he said in the release.
“This year alone, we saw a 25 per cent increase in IT contractor roles.”
Nominations for the 2012 ARN IT Industry Awards open on Tuesday, June 12.
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Comments
Suzan Gillie
Worker and Skills Shortages
When you use the phrase "labor shortage" or "skills shortage" you're speaking in a sentence fragment. What you actually mean to say is: "There is a labor shortage at the salary level I'm willing to pay." That statement is the correct phrase; the complete sentence and the intellectually honest statement.
Some people speak about shortages as though they represent some absolute, readily identifiable lack of desirable services. Price is rarely accorded its proper importance in their discussion.
If you start raising wages and improving working conditions, and continue doing so, you'll solve your shortage and will have people lining up around the block to work for you even if you need to have huge piles of steaming manure hand-scooped on a blazing summer afternoon.
If you think there's going to be a shortage caused by employees retiring out of the workforce: Guess again: With the majority of retirement accounts down about 50% or more, most people entering retirement age are working well into their sunset years. So, you won’t be getting a worker shortage anytime soon due to retirees exiting the workforce.
Okay, fine. Some specialized jobs require training and/or certification, again, the solution is higher wages and improved benefits. People will self-fund their re-education so that they can enter the industry in a work-ready state. The attractive wages, working conditions and career prospects of technology during the 1980’s and 1990’s was a prime example of people’s willingness to self-fund their own career re-education.
There is never enough of any good or service to satisfy all wants or desires. A buyer, or employer, must give up something to get something. They must pay the market price and forego whatever else he could have for the same price. The forces of supply and demand determine these prices -- and the price of a skilled workman is no exception. The buyer can take it or leave it. However, those who choose to leave it (because of lack of funds or personal preference) must not cry shortage. The good is available at the market price. All goods and services are scarce, but scarcity and shortages are by no means synonymous. Scarcity is a regrettable and unavoidable fact.
Shortages are purely a function of price. The only way in which a shortage has existed, or ever will exist, is in cases where the "going price" has been held below the market-clearing price.
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