According to Olivier, the director of Olivier Recruitment, the next three-to-six months are likely to see a surge in job ads, driven largely by the small-to-medium business sector. However, the scale of the surge is likely to be curtailed by greater caution shown by multinational businesses with greater exposure to any economic fallout from a war with Iraq.
"There is great concern the economic and political instability in the US will have an impact on bigger business," said Olivier. "If there is going to be any impact from the Iraqi situation, it will be on the larger companies. They'll be the ones to take the wait-and-see approach." However, he claimed local businesses were unlikely to change their hiring plans should the conflict occur, keeping faith with the view that war in the Middle East is unlikely to have a significant effect on the local economy.
The traditional New Year lethargy in hiring has quickly ended, with the number of job ads at the end of January 43 percent greater than at the beginning of January, ending just 6.6 percent below December levels, according to the latest edition of Olivier's Internet Job Index.
Although following the same trend of strong growth through January, the IT sector performed poorly against the other sectors, ending January with 10 percent fewer jobs advertised than in December.
"IT outpaced the general market in December but didn't grow quite as fast in January," said Olivier. "There are two possible ways of looking at this, either it's not as healthy a start as we would have liked, or it didn't slow down as much and so had less to recover."
"There was no guarantee it would bounce back anyway after last year," said Olivier. "The fact that it has done so is encouraging."
The Olivier Internet Job Index IT sector is at its lowest point since the index began in 1999, and has suffered small but consistent losses throughout 2002. The only period of growth last year was between January and February, giving the impression that if jobs don't pick up in February, the long-awaited recovery will keep job seekers waiting.
