The job market continued to strengthen during September, with new research from recruitment firm Advantage Professional showing total job advertisements increased 3.29% in the month, with big jumps in advertisements for health care workers, accountants and IT professionals.
The Advantage Job Index (formerly known as the Olivier Job Index) tracked 214,938 job ads during the month, and showed part-time positions vacant increased by 3.4%, while there was a 3.2% increase in full-time job ads.
Contract and temporary roles increased 1.8%, indicating a greater confidence among employers who are now willing to invest in full-time staff.
Looking at the data on a sector-by-sector basis, the largest increases were in healthcare (up 7.29% cent), accounting (6.57%), information technology (5.57%) and hospitality and tourism (5.03%).
However, Bob Olivier, director of global market intelligence at Advantage Resourcing, says commentators need to be careful before declaring skills shortages are back across all of these industries.
Olivier says the level of job ads remains well down on what was seen before the GFC, and while the labour market is getting tighter, the situation differs from industry to industry.
“There is still a way to go before we get to the situation we had three years ago, but I think it is starting to head that way.”
For example, while demand for healthcare workers has remained high throughout the last five years, the rise in accounting positions vacant is more a signal that businesses were becoming more confident about growth plans that than a problem with skill shortages.
“We’ve been waiting for some time for this to happen. There is pent up demand but I don’t think there are acute shortages there at all.”
However, IT does loom as a sector where skills shortages will soon be a major problem. Olivier says advertisements for software developers climbed 8.3% during September in a sign that companies are once again looking to invest in IT systems that may have been patched up or maintained during the GFC.
Olivier says the NBN will also have an impact on demand for IT workers, starting with those in the project management area and feeding through eventually to more general programmers and developers.
The sectors where job advertisements fell included education (down 8.39%), advertising and media (-5.4%) and human resources (-2.97%).
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
