Durban — A labour consultant has revealed that employers have become cautious when it comes to recruitment after seeing the impact of the pandemic and the uncertainty of Eskom’s supply of electricity and increased interest rates.
This is after a job-search application, CareerJunction, released an employment overview which showed a decline in hiring activity. Career Junction said there was a 3% decline in hiring activity in the past three months in traditional occupational categories, namely sales, admin, business management sectors, office and support information technology.
Speaking to broadcaster Newzroom Afrika, Tony Healy, a labour consultant, said employers were looking at promoting multi-skilling and multitasking within the existing workforce and were trying to manage their costs.
He advised young people or anyone who had a long runway in their career ahead of them, to look around for jobs that were in demand. In the past three months, there has been a decline in traditional occupational categories, namely sales, business management and office administration.
“In the digital design area, there is a high demand for those kinds of skills, and because of the exodus of the medical fraternity, we are seeing a high demand in the latest statistics,” he said.
Furthermore, he said the labour-intensive industry had bounced back significantly and there was a high demand for anyone who had skills in the hospitality field, such as in restaurants and accommodation. He further advised people to look where the shortages were and try to increase their skills and qualifications in those areas. He said some people worked just to pay the bills, but if one could find ways to earn money by doing something that they loved and were passionate about, they should go for it.
The declines are as follows:
Sales (-19%)
- Representative/ Sales consulting
- Account management
Admin, Office & Support (-17%)
- Teller/ cashier
- Human resources
- Client/ Customer support
- Secretary
- Admin clerk
Information Technology (-14%)
- Software development
- Business analysis
- IT project administration/ management
- Database design/ development/ administration
- Data analysis/ data warehousing
Business & Management (-9%)
- Middle/ department management
- Executive management/ director
- Business development
- Team leader & supervisor
The report said there was a decline in demand for information technology from the period of November 2021, December 2021 and January 2022 to the period of November 2022, December 2022 and January 2023 across KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and the Western Cape. Potential reasons for the decline may be international lay-offs as well as job cuts by global tech companies (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, eBay, Dell, IBM, PayPal and SAP), and Naspers (which owns Media24 and Takealot) announcing local lay-offs.
For medical and health sectors, Gauteng saw a dip in recruitment for this sector from the period of November 2020, December 2020 and January 2021 to the period of November 2021, December 2021 and January 2022. There was growth in demand during the same period the following year (from November 2021, December 2021 and January 2022 to November 2022, December 2022 and January 2023)
In KZN, the Western Cape and Gauteng, there was a growth in demand for this sector over the past three years: from the period of November 2020, December 2020 and January 2021 to the period of November 2021, December 2021 and January 2022, and again in the period of November 2022, December 2022 and January 2023 across Gauteng, the Western Cape and KZN.
Potential reasons could be expansion and investments in the logistics sector. Two examples included DHL Global forwarding opening a new logistics facility at OR Tambo International Airport in October 2022, and LULU Group being cleared to establish a new logistics hub in Johannesburg in October 2022. New business and expansion create new job opportunities.
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