IT sector 'starting to hire again'

The jobs market is still in decline but a few private sector industries, such as IT, are starting to hire again, marking the first rise in recruitment intentions since the recession began.



Alongside their counterparts in IT, employers in the retail industry are also returning to the fold, helping private sector hiring to begin to "stabilise" after a surge of job cuts.



Not only are far fewer firms planning to cut their headcounts, but the scale of expected layoffs has also been scaled back, indicating staffing needs are currently under review.



But total unemployment, officially 2.4million as of yesterday, is still rising, and further job losses will come in the public sector when spending is cut over the next few months.



Hiring intentions in the sector plummeted from -3 per cent to -28 per cent in the last three months, while in the private sector they improved from -30 per cent to -2 per cent.



This signals "mixed prospects" for the jobs market said the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and KPMG, which issued these findings after surveying 900 employers.



However, given the Bank of England's view that the weak jobs market will - at best – experience an "anaemic recovery," the short-term prospects still appear to be bleak.



"When it comes to the immediate jobs outlook, the best that can be said is that things are getting worse more slowly," said John Philpott, CIPD chief economist.



A weak economic recovery could spark a new surge of redundancies in the private sector, in spite of cuts at affected firms falling to 4 per cent from 6.5 per cent three months ago, he said.



With more certainty, the institute warned of redundancies in the public sector, affecting local government staff the most, where 15 per cent of the sector's outfits are planning new layoffs.



Last week, workers at Logica, an IT contractor supplying the sector, were told of sabbaticals, additional holidays and reduced working hours, under new cost-cutting measures.



The Anglo Dutch company also announced a freeze on salaries for the rest of year and confirmed it had negotiated "significant reductions" to pay rates for IT contractors.



But Mr Philpott said that while cuts to pay or hours has saved many jobs that might otherwise have been lost, holding onto staff if order books are thin "can't be sustained indefinitely."



Yet because the availability of contract staff is "strongly rising," employers are unlikely to have difficulty finding replacements on a temporary basis, shows the REC's Report on Jobs for July.



Though there are exceptions in the IT sector - applying to client companies looking for Sharepoint and CNC Programming, contract skills which were found to be in "short supply."



The Recruitment and Employment Confederation also reported a shortage of full-time .Net developers, though IT recruiters at CV Screen said such roles had been less sought-after than PHP developers in the last 12 months.



Matt Iveson, the firm's managing director, said: "We are noticing that more and more companies are looking at redeveloping and optimising their website and the cheapest way of doing this is with PHP.



"We would anticipate that given that .NET is typically used by larger organisations who are holding off on new projects, that PHP will continue to gain market share."



The firm's database show that, while demand is still higher for Microsoft's development skills, a shift towards open source technologies has seen the requirement for .NET fall by 49 per cent since last year.



Reflecting on its own findings, the CIPD said: "While net employment intentions remain negative, some private industries, including retail and IT, are starting to hire again, marking the first rise in recruitment intentions since the recession began."