The Job's On Blog – Canberra Jobs

Archive for the ‘Market Trends’ Category

Job ads up and down, unemployment up

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publication Labour Force, Australia shows that the unemployment rate increased by 0.2 points to 5.3% in seasonally adjusted terms, but remained constant at 5.2% in trend terms in July. The participation rate also increased by 0.2 points to 65.5% in seasonally adjusted terms, and remained at 65.3% in trend terms over the month. Employment increased 23,500 (0.2%) to 11,235,700. Full-time employment decreased 4,200 to 7,866,400 and part-time employment increased 27,700 to 3,369,400. In the ACT, the unemployment rate remained at 3.4%, while the participation rate dropped by 0.1 point to 72.9% in July. For more information click here

Job ads very reported as both up and down by the major indexes:

The Advantage Job Index slipped 1.30% in July, further evidence of a slowing job market. Historically the job market falters at election time. It will be interesting to see to what extent the market picks up again post election. Ironically, irrespective of which party wins, we believe the employment market will recover. The fall this month was unusually unevenly split with Building and Construction and Human Resources taking significant hits. Read the full report here…

The ANZ Job Advertisements Series shows that the total number of jobs advertised in major metropolitan newspapers and on the Internet rose by 1.3%, to a seasonally adjusted average of 171,685 per week in July. This monthly rise follows strong 2.8% and 2.7% increases in June and May respectively, meaning the series is now 36.1% higher than it was a year ago (at its cyclical trough). However total job advertisements remain 38.2% below the all-time peak reached in April 2008. In the ACT the average number of newspaper job advertisements per week increased by 1.4% in seasonally adjusted terms, and by 0.7% in trend terms in July. For more information click here

This post was drawn from the Canberra Business Council’s Business Bullets newsletter. To become a member of the Canberra Business Council, please visit the CBC website here: http://www.canberrabusinesscouncil.com.au

Tags: advantage job index, anz index, unemployment rate
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Skills Shortages May Drive Up Average Earnings

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

The Clarius Skills Index, prepared by KPMG-Econtech, measures the underlying demand and supply of skilled labour. A score of 100 indicates equal tension between labour supply and demand, while anything greater than 100 indicates a skills shortage. The overall Index for 20 categories in the June quarter was 99.6, compared with 98.5 at the same time last year. The eight categories where there were shortages were: Building and Engineering Professionals (101.1), Computing Professionals (100.2), Building and Engineering Associate Professionals (100.8), Chefs (105.3), Metal Tradespersons (104.5), Automotive Tradespersons (101.5), Construction Tradespersons (101.7) and Wood Tradespersons (101.8). Clarius believes that the skilled labour shortage is expected to drive a 5.4% annual increase in earnings over the next three years, and see unemployment rates drop below 5% by early 2011.

For more information click here

Meanwhile, the latest Housing Industry Association (HIA)-Austral Bricks Trades Report shows a shortage of skilled tradespeople in 8 of the 13 skilled trade categories, including bricklaying, carpentry, ceramic tiling, electrical, general building, joinery, landscaping, and plumbing. The HIA also notes that there is a growing rate of attrition of first year apprentices – currently at 33% – as well as a high number of apprentices who fail to complete their apprenticeship.

For more information click here

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Michael Page releases salary and employment forecast

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Michael Page has just released their 2010 Salary and Employment Forecast report.

The employment market has strengthened during the first half of 2010 with increased hiring activity across all white collar professional occupation groups. our annual employment survey, which this year includes responses from over 800 senior managers from Australia’s corporate sector, reveals 33% of employers anticipate an increase in staff numbers over the next six months. Some 56% believe their staffing levels will remain stable, with only 11% saying a reduction in headcount is likely.

The vast majority of hiring activity is occurring on a full-time basis and reflects growing confidence in the long term business outlook. Employers are showing a willingness to invest in their workforce to secure business critical skills before the job market tightens. Despite being temporarily obscured by the global financial crisis, the professional skills shortage remains fresh in the minds of corporate Australia. Some 41% of employers surveyed believe a skills shortage will become an issue for their business during the next 12 months.

Download the 2010 MP Salary and Employment Forecast here…

Tags: michael page
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A third of candidates happy to be scrutinised online: Hays

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

More than a third of all job seekers accept that employers are entitled to check out their social media profiles when assessing them for a role, according to a new poll from Hays.

However, while 34% of the 900 candidates surveyed expected employers to check their social media profile and found this acceptable, a larger group – some 46%, felt employers were invading their privacy by screening them on social media.

The remaining 20% of candidates didn’t think employers were checking them out online.

Hays director Grahame Doyle said the majority of job seekers seemed to feel that “their personal life is their personal life, and their social media profile should not be used as part of the [recruitment] decision-making process”.

However, he noted there was a a sizeable group who believed that any actions that took place in the public domain were open to public scrutiny and assessment.

“In our experience, most employers do not leap to check a candidate’s online profile.

“It is far more common that an employer will extend their vetting process to include social media only if they feel a candidate might not be what they are portraying themselves to be in their face-to-face interview.”

In any event, he said, it was common sense for people searching for a job to change their privacy settings so not all of their posted content was shared.

He noted that it wasn’t just the main social media sites that candidates should be worried about, as employers that were using the internet to research candidates “will not stop at Facebook”.

Employers were also looking at content uploaded to video-sharing sites like YouTube, online forums and blogs, comments on social bookmarking sites (like Digg and Reddit), and much else, Doyle said.

Shortlist has covered the legal ins and outs of candidate privacy and social media previously.

This article appeared in Shortlist News, an email service providing the latest news and analysis on recruitment and human capital management

Tags: hays, social media, social networking
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Skills Shortages: The Sequel (Part II)

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

In last week’s InSight lead article, ‘Skills Shortage: The Sequel’, I highlighted the recent flurry of publicity in the mainstream media about the skills shortage. Contrary stories have also made the news. Recruitment industry veteran, Bob Olivier, made headlines in the AFR (Friday 23 July, 2010, page 46) by stating he believed the skills shortage was ‘overplayed’ due to ‘quality candidates being unwilling to move jobs’ and industry news service, ShortList quoted ICT Training Executive Clinton in’t Veld as saying;

“Generally speaking, when an environment starts to pick up economically, there is this sort of knee-jerk reaction to think that given the increase in economic activity, we don’t have enough skills.”

But many companies were only considering the primary, formal skills of their IT staff – in essence their current job title – rather than looking at all of the other skill sets they had picked up along the way, he said.”So who is right? Is there a skills shortage or not?

As you would expect, the answer is not definitive. It depends upon who you are and what you are measuring.

Let’s look at some typical reasons why a skills shortage might exist.

One dimensional sourcing: If you are an employer and all you do is run a job ad in the local paper or online and from that process you aren’t able to hire the ‘ideal candidate’, then you are likely to scream ‘skills shortage’.

No development of employees: If you are an employer who doesn’t invest in building the skills and motivation of their employees because ‘all that happens is that people leave to get a better job, with more money, elsewhere’, then you are likely to believe there is a skills shortage.

Geographically isolated: If you are a Council in a regional or rural area, desperate to find a doctor for your area, then you know there is a skills shortage. This topic was recently given excellent coverage in the SBS documentary Desperately Seeking Doctors.

Low pay: The maximum base pay for classroom teachers in any state of Australia does not exceed $85,000 p.a. The baby boomer wave of teachers are now retiring, creating concerns about the likelihood of the higher paying careers in the technology, finance and resources sectors, luring away potential teachers from undertaking (arguably) the most important paid job in any community.

Unsociable hours: Would you like a job whose core hours are when 99% of your friends and family are asleep? Try a career as a baker.

Dangerous and dysfunctional work environment: Forget all the faux glamour of Masterchef. The reality of life as a chef is a combination of unsocial hours and a work environment combining flames, heat, sharp knives, slippery surfaces and ‘tired and emotional’ colleagues. No wonder the most recent Clarius Skills Index rated chefs as the #1 ranked job where demand exceeded supply in Australia. Let’s hope all those Masterchef-inspired enrolments in hospitality colleges around the country stick with their choice.

A skills shortage is not just a function of the things I have listed above, it’s a function of expectations; the expectations of employers of being able to hire exactly what they are looking for at the price they want to pay.

Training of employees has traditionally been seen as a function of the education system, funded and supplied by the government. Once a ‘trained’ employee started their job, the typical employer took little, if any, responsibility for the further development of that employee. If the employee somehow managed to pick things up as they went along then they were a ‘good’ employee and if they didn’t, they were ‘no good’.

Unfortunately, investing in the ongoing training and development of employees has not been a key feature in the history of Australian organisational life. Too often, training and development has been provided only to those employees who are not meeting performance expectations and therefore needed ‘fixing’.

High performing organisations understand how important a culture of ongoing learning and development is in avoiding the worst of a skills shortage by:

Not having to purchase ready-to-go skills at a premium from the open employment market
Lower staff turnover costs
Higher innovation
Higher morale
High productivity
Better bottom line results

I wrote in detail about this sort of high performance culture in March 2009 in a feature article What Australia’s Champion Cricket Coach Can Teach Recruiters for recruitment extra.

I think an excellent corporate example of what is possible, is evident at Australian publicly listed travel company, Flight Centre.

Travel agencies were commonly regarded as a dying sector and choosing a career as a travel agent was seen as a dead-end option, primarily due to the internet being able to provide instant self-service for travel bookings as well as destination information and recommendations.

Flight Centre has been very pro-active about the recruitment and development of their people in an industry that has been traditionally characterised by low margins, low pay and high staff turnover.

Flight Centre own 50% of high-volume recruiter, Employment Office. They invest heavily in training and development, reward their staff with many non-monetary benefits and provide many opportunities for career advancement, both domestically and internationally.

The result? Flight Centre are consistently listed in the Hewitt Associates list of Best Australian Employers To Work For (four of the past five years) and earlier this year, Flight Centre forecast a pre-tax profit for the 09/10 financial year of between $180 million to $200 million, representing a doubling of the 08/09 full year profit result.

Clearly, Flight Centre has taken responsibility for their own supply of required skills and they are reaping huge benefits, culturally and financially, from this approach.

Yes, there is demonstrably a skills shortage in this country in many areas but before too many employer groups start bleating at the Federal Government to issue more Class 457 Visas, they might want to look at their own industry’s record of providing high quality, ongoing training and development programs for all their employees.

This article is reproduced with permission from Ross Clennett’s blog – http://rossclennett.blogspot.com/2010/08/skills-shortage-sequel-part-2.html

As a professional recruiter, between 1989 and 2003, Ross screened over 80,000 resumes, interviewed over 3,000 people and successfully placed over 500 people in work. Over this time he worked in London, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne. Ross now works as a speaker, trainer, coach and recruitment industry commentator.

In 2009 Ross launched Australia’s first professional development website for recruitment company owners and managers which provides a variety of training and strategic resources in various multi-media formats. For more information visit www.rossclennett.com

Tags: ross clennett
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Job Vacancies Up in July

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) Vacancy Report shows that the Skilled Vacancy Index (SVI) increased by 0.3% to 46.4 in July. Vacancies fell for two of the three occupational groups: Associate Professionals (-1.4%) and Professionals (-1.1%) while Trades increased by 1.0% over the month. In annual terms, the SVI is 22.7% higher than in July 2009 with Trades up by 51.4%, reflecting very strong growth for Construction Trades (+119.3%) and Metal Trades (+101.2%). The Internet Vacancy Index (IVI) increased by 0.9% to 80.3 in June, and in annual terms is 11.5% higher than in June 2009. In the ACT, the IVI fell by 1.8% in June, the only jurisdiction to record a drop in vacancies over the month.

For more information click here

Tags: deewr, skilled vacancy index
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Skills Shortages in Australia – the sequel…

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

The June 2010 unemployment rate in the United States was 9.5%. In the UK the ‘headline’ unemployment was 7.9% and two weeks ago, the OECD reported that the unemployment rate in the world’s 31 leading industrialised economies averaged fell to 8.6% in May, 2010.

These rather bleak figures from elsewhere around the globe (although improving from earlier in the year), compare starkly with the very sunny outlook in this part of the world. Falling unemployment figures coming out of Australia (5.1%) and New Zealand (6%) are predicted to maintain their downward momentum.

Although the new (Australian) financial year is not yet a month old, we are already seeing the unmistakable signs of a very quick return to the desperate times of 2007 when the words ‘skills shortage’ seemed to appear as regularly as ‘NRL in crisis’ or ‘Wallabies optimistic for new season ahead’.

On 6 July in the SMH article ‘Unqualified used to fill persistent job vacancies’, the Australian Government admitted that jobs were being filled by unqualified candidates simply because there were not sufficient skilled applicants available to fill the vacant roles.

This was most often the case with special needs teachers. The SMH reported that teachers with no expertise in teaching special needs children were being hired because teachers with the necessary specialised skills were not being trained quickly enough to meet demand.

On 7 July ABC1′s 7.30 Report ran a segment on how the acute shortage of doctors for rural and regional areas in Australia is being somewhat overcome by New Zealand locum doctors flying across the Tasman to plug the gaps, sometimes just for a weekend.

On 9 July, in The Australian article ‘If you want work, the west wants you’, it was reported that in response to the West Australian unemployment rate plummeting to 4%, the State Government announced that they are, next month, launching a massive recruitment campaign aimed at luring skilled east coast workers to WA.

The WA State Training and Workforce Development Minister released a list of 348 priority occupations, including carpenters, vets, midwives, optometrists, social workers, lift mechanics, butchers, bakers, prison officers, plumbers, architects, pilots, accountants, nurses, chefs and locksmiths.

On 14 July the Victorian Premier launched a new $6 million dollar campaign to recruit nearly 1700 new police officers for the state over the coming five years. Accompanied by a slick TV commercial, the Premier and the Chief Commissioner of Police clearly recognise that to win the hearts and minds of the desired talent pool, you have to make policing both a sexy and genuine career option for skilled young Victorians.

The next day, 15 July, the Australian Industry Group-sponsored Deloitte survey of CEOs was released.

This survey reported that skills shortages were a high-to-extreme, business critical risk between now and 2015. The survey of 400 companies, employing over 30,000 people in the manufacturing, services and construction sector, reported the following research findings:

More than 4 in every 5 businesses believe there is a moderate-to-extreme risk that skills shortages will adversely affect them in 2010
27.4% of all vacancies over the past 6 months remain unfilled
Almost two thirds of companies had difficulties filling vacancies over the past 6 months
As to the specific nature of these difficulties the reasons; ‘lack of specialised skills available’ was nominated by 59.3% of companies and ‘lack of applicants’ by 48.5% of companies
Companies are responding to the lack of skilled candidates by ‘upskilling existing staff’ (37.8%) and ‘outsourcing or subcontracting the work’ (31.2%)
12.6% of companies report that the skills shortages are so significant as to ‘constrain production’
Over three quarters of the survey respondents expect to hire more staff in the next 12 months, including 53% nominating that they will be increasing their total number of staff

15 July also saw the Australian Computer Society release a report highlighting ageism as a prominent issue in the Australian IT employment market.

The conclusions of the report ‘Improving Age Diversity in the ICT Workforce’, were that ICT workers aged over 45 were more likely to be unemployed in Australia compared to their counterparts in Canada, the UK, New Zealand and the USA.

The unsaid implication being that the so-called ‘skills shortage’ of ICT workers was more accurately an ‘attitude issue’ of employers being reluctant to consider employing older workers and unwilling to invest time and money in providing the necessary training for the up-skilling to these workers.

The 15 July trifecta was completed when a Federal Government taskforce, set up to help secure the critically important resources sector, a skilled workforce for the future, handed down its final report.

The National Resources Sector Employment Taskforce Report, ‘Resourcing the Future’ recommends using skilled migrants to fill temporary shortages, graduating more engineers and geoscientists and increasing the number of skilled trade professionals.

All of these actions will need to be taken pronto as the Report predicts that the resources sector is heading for a projected shortage of 36,000 skilled trades professionals by 2015. The Report also concludes that the domestic supply of mining engineers and geoscientists will not be sufficient to meet demand over the next five years, with an expected shortfall of around 1,700 and 3,000 respectively.

So what does all this flurry of action mean for recruiters?

My view is that all these very clear signs point to the need, as trusted external recruitment advisors, to be assertive with our clients about the market for talent.

We need to be especially (respectfully) assertive to clients who are doggedly sticking to some outdated views such as ‘there’s plenty of candidates out there’, or ‘I’ll wait for the candidate who ticks all the boxes’, or ‘I can afford to take my time hiring’, or ‘I shouldn’t need to sell this job or my organisation to candidates, they should want to work here’.

Plainly put: Recruiters need to educate their clients about the current realities of the skilled employment market and that things will only get tougher in the months and years ahead.

Education of clients comes through various channels such as articles in email newsletters, blog posts on industry forum websites, sending relevant reports (such as the ones I have highlighted in this article) directly to clients, holding seminars on the issue and building it deliberately into face-to-face and telephone conversations with clients.

A single channel approach will not do the job. I recommend that you need to have a clear communication strategy about this issue across your whole organisation, no matter how big or small it is.

The consequences of not undertaking this continual education of your clients will be the inevitable frustration of attempting to find the ‘impossible’ candidate for your inflexible client. Also, the likelihood that you will be ‘out consulted’ by a competitor who is effective at educating the client and managing their expectations about candidates.

As recruitment professionals, I believe we have an obligation to undertake this education campaign with our clients because if we are not willing and able to do it, then who is?

This is a great opportunity to elevate our standing in the eyes of our clients. We may not be communicating a message that is popular or easy to deliver, but if we are effective at providing alternative ways of dealing with the skills shortage problem, then our future as an industry is more assured than ever.

What steps are you willing to take?

This article is reproduced with permission from Ross Clennett’s blog – http://rossclennett.blogspot.com/2010/07/skills-shortage-sequel_27.html

Tags: ross clennett, skills shortages
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Skills Shortages Pose a Risk to Growth

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

A new Australian Industry Group/Deloitte CEO survey entitled Skills Shortages: A High Risk Business indicates that skills shortages are again looming large as a major risk for business and pose real problems for companies in terms of production and service delivery. This situation is forecast to intensify.

The survey, which involved more than 400 companies of all sizes, found that 34.7% of businesses believe there is a high to extreme risk of skills shortages negatively impacting on the operation of their businesses this year. This level of concern increases to 47.5% of businesses by 2015. Nearly two-thirds of all businesses faced difficulties filling their vacancies over the past 6 months.

The major reasons these positions remain vacant is due to a lack of specialised skills required forthe job(59.3%), the lack of applicant skills and experience (54.1%) and the absence of local trainingoptions (32.6%).Respondents believe government should play a bigger role in addressing skills shortages.Suggested reforms include additional financial incentives for small businesses, tax breaks fortraining expenditure and making trade apprentices more attractive to both individuals and business.

For more information click here

Tags: skills shortages
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Unemployment steady, employment indicator and job ads rise

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publication Labour Force, Australia shows that the unemployment rate remained steady at 5.1% in seasonally adjusted terms in June. The trend unemployment rate was also unchanged, remaining at 5.2% for the month. The participation rate exhibited a 0.1 point increase to 65.2% in seasonally adjusted terms, but remained at 65.1% in trend terms in June. The rise in employment was driven by a rise in part-time employment, up 27,500 people to 3.306 million. This was reinforced by a rise in full-time employment, up 18,400 people to 7.795 million. In the ACT the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.3%, and the participation rate was also unchanged at 73.1% in June. The ACT’s unemployment rate is second only to that of the NT which stands at 2.8%.

For more information click here

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) Leading Indicator of Employment has risen for the third consecutive month, to sit at -0.599 standard deviations from the cyclical trend in July 2010. It is still too early to confirm that a renewed quickening in the pace of employment growth above its long-term trend rate of 1.9% per annum is in prospect, because the Indicator has risen for fewer than six consecutive months. Cyclical employment has now risen for the ninth consecutive month, although the rate of growth is diminishing.

For more information click here

The ANZ Job Advertisements Series shows that the total number of jobs advertised in major metropolitan newspapers and on the Internet rose by 2.7% in June, to a seasonally adjusted average of 169,690 per week. This follows a 2.7% increase in May (originally reported as a 4.3% rise). In seasonally adjusted terms, newspaper job ads fell 1.6%, while Internet job ads rose 3% in June. In trend terms, total job ads grew 1.8% in June and 30.2% over the year to June. In the ACT, the number of newspaper job advertisements per week fell by 1.3% (seasonally adjusted) but was up 0.1% (trend) over the month.

For more information click here

Tags: abs, anz job index, monthly leading indicator of employment, unemployment rate
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ACT Targets Skilled Workers in WA

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Skilled workers and students living in Perth are the latest to be targeted by the ACT Government’s Live in Canberra team. The Team is promoting Canberra at the National Careers and Employment Expo in Perth. The expo is the fourth in a series of five National Careers and Employment Expos the Live in Canberra team will attend around Australia this year. This is the second visit by the Live in Canberra team to the Perth expo; last year the team generated over 100 enquiries from skilled workers and skilled migrants looking to relocate to Canberra from Perth. Canberra has already attracted over 20 skilled workers from Perth in the last 12 months.

For more information click here

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