Lack of jobs only in certain industries?

fguihen

I was sitting at a table last night. out of 8 people, 3 people at the table changed jobs in the last 2 weeks.

These people all had good jobs, but still went and got different jobs.
2 of those jobs were in IT, one was in Legal.

We hear about the lack of jobs all the time, but the stats at our table last night portray something very different.

Is the lack of jobs only in some industries ( construction for example), and are a lot of the problems, such as employers market, lower wages etc, brought on by not by a waining economy and tightening purse strings in companies, but by the reaction of the standard PAYE workers, and companies are simply taking advantage?

E.g. rumour gets out that a company is going to make half its staff redundant, so the staff go looking for jobs and accept "anything" with lower wages etc, just to have a job out of fear, instead of bargaining and negotiating a good wage as would have happened in the boom years.

dan_d

There are no jobs in some sectors, few jobs in others, and a lot in a small number of sectors.

The thing is that are genuinely not enough jobs out there now (as opposed to no jobs at all). Construction has been wiped out...many people consider that to mean that all the brickies/plasters/plumbers are now unemployed but that's not all. There are well-educated and qualified people that were working in construction too, who are now job hunting. Who do have transferrable skills and who, with a year or 2 of training would be able to easily switch over to another industry.

But say you have something like IT - there'll be a certain number of jobs in IT available. Before you'd have grads, and people within IT switching around. Now you've got grads, people within IT, people who have been unemployed and done a couple of IT courses, people who had IT as part of their main qualification but have been working for the last few years, and then just general unemployed others, all looking to get one of this certain number of jobs.

Ditto for finance and banking. There's a smaller number of jobs, but the pool of people looking for jobs has increased massively. Which mean employers can (and are) being incredibly picky about who they chose. I'm not sure the salary thing in those industries is right either - from what I've seen, employers will pay the "right" people a large salary if they demand it. And then yes, there are some employers who are just completely taking advantage of people.

Smoggy

the IT industry is lacking senior developers. Between 2000 and 2005 the recruitment figures to collages were way down, so now in 2011 there are very few developers with experience.

hatful

What was the average age of the group? How many years experience did each one have?

fguihen

Average age around 27/28 ish.
Experience, min of 5 years average.

mickman

there are lots of jobs in IT at the moment. the multi nationals are hiring in droves.

in cork there is near full employment in IT

Lux23

I keep hearing IT companies and recruitment agencies moaning that there aren't enough qualified people in their field, why aren't they looking at working with colleges to tailor qualifications to their needs? It wouldn't take a huge amount of investment.

mickman

Lux23 wrote: »

I keep hearing IT companies and recruitment agencies moaning that there aren't enough qualified people in their field, why aren't they looking at working with colleges to tailor qualifications to their needs? It wouldn't take a huge amount of investment.

yes they are, emc + a few other companies have formed a bsc in cloud computing in cit

Lux23

Well thats good, more should do it. The problem with alot of IT qualifications is that they are obsolete by the time the kids get a job.

syklops

Lux23 wrote: »

I keep hearing IT companies and recruitment agencies moaning that there aren't enough qualified people in their field, why aren't they looking at working with colleges to tailor qualifications to their needs? It wouldn't take a huge amount of investment.

They are. Part of the problem is the companies say to the colleges "We need more maths students", and the colleges say "You're telling us!".