With our breath nervously held, the team at Clicks sent out its survey for the quarterly IT Employment Confidence Index last month. Whilst we’re aware that few industries are in a positive situation right now, we felt it was important to continue to collect market sentiment data regardless.
The first thing that struck me was that 22% of respondents are currently unemployed. That’s by far our highest number since we began the index five years ago. This wasn’t the only ‘record’ achieved in this quarter’s responses. Negative sentiment was the highest on record, at 40%, and 42% neutral, leaving just 18% feeling positive about Australian economic conditions.
In the previous index, those who felt that their job was safe for the next 12 months was 31%. This time, the number was just 2%: a striking manifestation of just how uncertain this market is.
In another all-time high, 41% of people indicated that they expected to be looking for work in the next year. Those feeling positive about their ability to secure a new job fell from 57% last quarter to 37% this quarter.
Rounding out the index, just 11% felt that there were plenty of jobs available to them. Nearly half of respondents did feel positive about their overall employment prospects however, at 43%, with 38% feeling neutral.
Whilst these results are far from good, they are unsurprising. The tech sector has, however, certainly not fared as poorly as others. Indeed, there are pockets of greatly increased demand, particularly in cyber security and networking. Contract recruitment has certainly weathered the COVID-19 storm better than permanent recruitment, demand for which may take some time to recover.
If Clicks can help with any further insights that will assist with your resource forward planning, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me: you can email me or call me on 03 9963 4802.
I look forward to sharing the data from our next survey with you, which will go out in August. Hopefully we’ll have a more optimistic view of things by then.
Get the full results of this quarter’s index here.
General Manager, Operations
