According to the DEWR Skills Shortage Survey Update and Employment Vacancy Trends, no ICT skills were in national shortage.
However, the survey, which was conducted in May 2004, showed that some ICT skills were reported to be lacking in individual states or territories, especially in New South Wales.
The survey showed that the number of vacancies in NSW dropped to 30 percent compared with 32 percent in the same period the previous year. Meanwhile, Victoria experienced a 10 percent fall in vacancies while Western Australia job openings, on the other hand, rose to 62 percent from 38 percent.
Since July 2003, employment for ICT professionals rose by 110,200 or 124 percent to 199,000. Employment of ICT professionals also fell by 3.1 percent or 6,300.
The unemployment rate for ICT professionals averaged 3.8 percent in the year to August 2004.
The DEWR ICT vacancy index decreased by 0.7 percent over the four weeks to October 2004 but the ICT index is still 70.4 percent higher when compared with last year.
The three ICT online recruiting sites included in the ICT vacancy index averaged around 14,300 vacancies in the four weeks to mid October 2004.
The survey includes both employers of ICT professionals and ICT recruitment agencies. The DEWR annual ICT skill shortage survey is usually conducted in May through the state offices of DEWR.
The survey was conducted by telephone and included employers from each state and territory, selected from recent newspaper or online job vacancy advertisements, and ICT recruitment agencies. DEWR contacted 78 recruitment agencies and 122 employers for the survey.
The current ICT vacancy index is based on a weekly count of ICT vacancies advertised on three Web sites; jobnet.com.au, seek.com.au and mycareer.com.au.
