Growth rate of job vacancies slowing year on year, IrishJobs.ie finds

There were signs of stabilisation in the Irish jobs market in the first quarter of the year, a new survey has found, with the growth rate of job vacancies falling year on year.

The IrishJobs.ie survey found job vacancies rose 44 per cent year on year, down from the 86 per cent reported in the previous quarter.

General manager with IrishJobs.ie Orla Moran said the rate of jobs growth remained strong.

“We’re seeing that jobs are up 52 per cent pre-Covid,” she said, noting the significant increase between quarter one of 2020 and the first quarter of 2022. However, the growth in job vacancies versus the desire of job seekers to change their roles are out of equilibrium, she said.

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“That’s a huge increase because we were already in a very buoyant economy and a very competitive marketplace for companies pre-Covid. It’s now accelerated massively in the two years, and we are not yet seeing the big increase in jobseeker activity; we’re seeing the same levels on IrishJobs as we would have done in 2019.”

Hit by pandemic

There was significant growth, as expected, in some of the sectors worst-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, with the tourism, travel and airlines sector showing growth of more than 700 per cent in the number of vacancies year on year, andhotels and catering rising almost 400 per cent.

Out of the 30 sectors included in the index, some 22 showed year-on-year increases in the rate of job vacancy creation in the first quarter of the year; 15 showed a monthly increase.

There was also significant growth in public sector job vacancies, which were up more than 100 per cent year on year. That growth in the public sector recruitment is coming primarily from the universities, she said. “I think it shows the work that is being done to build a pipeline in talent for the future.”

Another striking statistic from the survey was the 130 per cent surge in work-from-home jobs year on year. That could prompt more people to switch jobs in the coming months. As more people want flexibility in their work hours and location, they may seek out employers who offer that, if their current company does not.

Remote work

“People want more of a hybrid; they want the choice and the flexibility.They don’t necessarily want to be home all the time but they do want that level of flexibility. That’s something they are demanding from their employers,” Ms Moran said.

That desire for flexibility could also be fuelling the growing number of job vacancies available outside of Dublin, with Wicklow, Kilkenny, Kildare and Carlow seeing the largest rise in the number of job vacancies.

“Today’s results show that it is still very much an employee’s market,” Ms Moran said. “HR departments will continue to have to work hard to fill key talent gaps in their organisation.” One bit of good news for beleaguered recruiters is that, according to research carried out by iReach, 30 per cent of people in March 2022 say they were looking to move job within the next 12 months compared to 23 per cent of people surveyed in December 2021.

The IrishJobs Jobs Index pulls data from the corporate jobs advertised on IrishJobs.ie and Jobs.ie, with all data analysed by DCU economist Declan Curran and economic geographer Chris van Egeraat.