Interesting article by the ITJob Board UK

Found an article in my spam/junk folder but seems a nice read for everyone.

Supply vs demand for IT professionals

Research published this week by e-skills stated that the demand for permanent IT and telecoms staff fell by 27 per cent, while contract worker demand slid 32 per cent over the first quarter of the year. The study went on to reveal that unemployment in the IT job market has reached a 5-year high, rising to 4.8% for this quarter (previously 2.4%).
Although this paints a gloomy picture of what is happening in the IT job market, the technology recruitment sector appears to be faring quite well when compared to other industries.

Difficulties in finding a job
Research conducted by The IT Job Board on redundancy highlighted nearly 50% of those that had been made redundant, stated that they had been out of a job for between 6-9 months. With the supply of IT professionals growing, employers should be in a position to recruit the best candidates in the market, but is this really the case?

This assumption was, however, contradicted by a survey on the IT recruitment market conducted by The IT Job Board, which found that 20% of employers had faced difficulty in hiring the right candidate for the job. When asked why, the general consensus was said to be that there was a lack of quality IT candidates in the market, and that IT professionals just didn’t seem to posses all the relevant skills required to fulfil the role. However, some employers did state that the positions they were recruiting for were very niche, and they had always faced difficulty when recruiting in this area.

Which skills are suffering the most?
Our research highlighted that IT Managers (19%), Project Manager (28%), Database Administrator (21%) Software Developer (26%) and IT Support (21%), were the skills cited by hiring managers as amongst the most difficult positions to recruit for. When these figures were compared to the research we conducted based on redundancy, we found that these IT professions were victim to the highest redundancy rates too.

How can supply and demand reach equilibrium?
This research has shown that although there is a growing supply of IT candidates in the market, it appears that a high number of quality IT professionals are staying put in their current roles. Reasons for this could be down to IT professionals feeling the instability of the market and have decided that job security is more important.


Cheers
KP