Job opportunities have risen recently despite fears of a slowing economy. The Morgan McKinley Irish Employment Monitor registered a 26% increase in job opportunities for professionals in September 10 compared to August 10, with the number of vacancies rising to 6,674 from 5,300. Job vacancies in September 10 were also 40% up on the September 09 figure of 4,764.
Compared with Q3 09, there was a 45% rise in job vacancies in Q3 10. However, the number of jobs showed very little change from the immediately prior quarter, increasing by 1% from Q2 10.
There was a 19% jump in professionals beginning their job search in September 10, increasing to 13,175 from 11,070 in August 10. The September 10 figure also registered a 19% increase on the September 09 figure of 11,105.
Brian Murphy, CEO of Premier Group Ireland, commented: “September 10 saw the highest volume of new professional job vacancies since October 08. While this is positive in itself, we are still well off the levels consistently attained at the height of the boom cycle in 2007. September 10 saw a 26% increase in new jobs over August 10, this is partly due to seasonal uplift as the market gathers pace after the summer and hiring managers and candidates are over the holiday season”.
“Q3 showed a 45% rise in jobs available compared to the same period last year, although that comes off the very low base experienced in Q3 09. While it is encouraging to see that 2010 continues to outperform 2009, Q3 10 vacancies are only up very slightly from Q2 10 (1% increase), which indicates that quarter-on-quarter growth may be slowing. However, the Q3 figures do include the traditionally slower summer months of July and August.
“While we saw an increase in recruitment activity across all of our specialist areas in September, we found the IT sector to be particularly active. There was a sizable improvement in the development space with technical requirements becoming more critical, not only core languages such as Java and .Net but also knowledge of the latest platforms such as web services and enterprise applications including Oracle and SAP. We also saw a lot of IT activity within the application support and testing areas with strong demand for support and configuration of web based applications”.
“September is typically one of the busiest months for jobseekers as the holiday season comes to an end and both candidates and hiring managers are more available for the interview process. It is good to see the trend continuing this year, with candidate numbers up by 19% from both the previous month August 10 and from September 09. Despite the lingering uncertainty in the economy, confidence among professionals appears to be growing.”
