How is recruitment advertising faring and what IT skills are in
demand? Nicholas Enticknap looks at the SSP/Computer Weekly
Quarterly Survey of Appointments Data and Trends
IT advertising in newspapers continued to fall during the second
quarter of 2001 at the same 40% rate as it has fallen throughout
the new millennium. The number of jobs on offer fell below 15,000
for the first time since the last recession bottomed out in 1993,
according to the SSP/Computer Weekly Quarterly Survey of
Appointments Data and Trends.
The market has been in a state of recession for 10 quarters, since
the recruitment boom fuelled by Y2K projects came to an end at the
beginning of 1999. The overall picture is not as bad as the raw
numbers suggest, as some advertising is now being placed on the Web
but there are no reliable figures available to suggest how much
recruiting is being done this way.
An Internet advertisement differs from a newspaper ad in that it
appears on a Web site for an indefinite period of time, whereas a
printed ad is published in one issue of a newspaper, or at least a
finite number of issues. Charging differs as well. These variations
make it difficult to combine the two types to assess the overall
state of the market.
In the printed media, all types of job position showed a decline. A
surprising finding is that vacancies for Web specialists -
administrators, designers, authors and editors - showed the biggest
decline of all, with positions advertised falling by 75% compared
to the second quarter of 2000. There were just 200 of these jobs
available during the past three months, compared to more than 800 a
year ago.
Less surprisingly, operations positions also fell by more than the
market average. There were just 81 on offer.
Database specialists fared the best, with the number of positions
advertised falling by just over 100, from 740 to 620. Networking
specialists also did better than average, for the 10th consecutive
quarter. They now account for 11% of all jobs advertised, which
compares with 5% at the beginning of 1999.
There is not much good news for those looking for development
positions, with jobs falling by between a third and a half,
relative to this time last year. There were 1,600 analysis posts
(down 38%), 700 programming jobs (down 34%), 2,800 system developer
jobs (down 43%) and 1,200 analyst/programmer jobs (down 43%).
The breakdown of jobs available by platform type produced another
surprise. Mainframe sites reduced their advertising by less than
any other category. The cut was still 31%, but that is better than
the 42% overall decline, the 45% decline in PC-based jobs and the
52% fall in jobs advertised by Unix sites.
Dec/Vax sites are rapidly disappearing from the advertising market
altogether, with just 41 jobs on offer during the past quarter, of
which only 17 specified expertise in the VMS operating system.
Geographically, job hunters in London had the worst time of it,
with the positions on offer falling by more than 50% from a year
ago. In total, there were just over 3,600 jobs advertised in the
capital, less than a quarter of the total. Wales and the West were
best placed for the third consecutive quarter, with just under
1,650 jobs available. This was a 17% drop from the second quarter
of 2000, while every other region saw a fall of 40% or more.
Among industry sectors, the public sector was the only one to show
growth, with the number of jobs advertised up 6% on a year ago -
the third year-on-year quarterly gain in succession. These
organisations have been relatively unaffected by the recession in
the commercial world, with the jobs on offer averaging about 900
per quarter throughout 1999 and 2000 and into this year. In the
past two complete calendar years, the public sector advertised
exactly the same number of jobs (3,705): every other sector saw a
significant decline in 2000.
Recruitment in the manufacturing sector has also stabilised, with
just 11 less jobs being advertised than this time last year. The
publishing world, in contrast, was badly hit in the second quarter,
with the number of jobs advertised falling by more than 50%
compared to the same period a year, and by exactly 50% relative to
the first quarter of 2001.
This was the only user sector to do worse than the market average
over the quarter. It was the IT industry that made the bulk of the
cutbacks, with jobs advertised by software houses falling by more
than 50% and the number of positions offered by computer suppliers
tumbling by 60%. The total number of jobs advertised by the
industry fell to well below 8,000, the lowest since SSP started
monitoring industry sectors in 1994.
This is the second quarter in succession that the IT industry has
cut advertising by substantially more than user companies, after
three years of recruiting more heavily. IT industry recruitment
advertising still accounts for more than half of the total, whereas
in 1997 it was just 42%.
Part of the reason for the change is that the industry did not feel
the effect of cutbacks in recruitment instigated by user
organisations following the peak of Y2K compliance work. Another is
undoubtedly the climate of caution in the industry, particularly in
US-owned companies, following a series of poor financial results,
job cuts and temporary factory closures among leading companies
such as Compaq, Cisco, Intel and Sun.
The salaries on offer across all industries and geographies rose by
an average 3.7%, significantly more than the retail price index
inflation figure of 2.1%, but still under the average wage
inflation figure, which has been between 4% and 5% for the past
couple of years.
Communications and networking consultants did noticeably better
than most, with a 9% increase taking the average salary offered
above £65,000. Management consultants, in contrast, saw the
remuneration offered fall for the second quarter in a row, and can
now expect to get £68,000. The differential between the two types
of consultant is less than £3,000 a year today, down from more than
£10,000 a year ago.
The technical specialists of the Internet world are increasingly in
demand. Technical analysts and systems architects saw their
salaries rise by 10% to top £58,000, nearly £20,000 more than a
senior systems programmer in a mainframe site.
Demand for IT professionals with Internet-related skills has fallen
for the second quarter in succession, following four years of solid
growth as the industry and users have turned to Java and
component-based programming as the way ahead into the e-business
world.
The decline in demand in the second quarter of 2001 was even
greater than in the first. Demand for both Java and HTML expertise
was down by well over 50% relative to the same period last year. As
a result Java has fallen from second to fifth in the skills league
table. just three quarters ago it was at the top.
Demand for generic object-oriented programming expertise has also
fallen by more than 50%, as has the requirement for C++ skills,
though both remain in the same positions in the table, with C++
staying at the top - a position it regained in the last quarter.
Component-based programming, as measured by demand for expertise in
Corba, has also dramatically lost popularity over the quarter,
falling six places.
XML, which showed the biggest growth in the first quarter, has also
been in decline during the past three months. Demand for Wap skills
is now petering out, with just over 150 jobs on offer, compared to
just under 350 a year ago.
It is the IT industry which is leading this return to more
traditional development methods. Software houses cut their
requirement for Java specialists from more than 2,500 a year ago to
under 900 this time. It is the same story with Corba, with the jobs
on offer from this sector down from more than 400 to under 150.
Computer suppliers reduced their demand for Java professionals from
120 to under 30.
But users too have less enthusiasm for Java than they did. Among
finance companies, demand is down by 50%, and among retailers by
considerably more than that. Both these industry sectors were still
increasing their Java requirement in the first quarter.
While the champagne corks will be popping in Redmond at this news
following Microsoft's decision to phase out Java support from the
launch of Windows XP in October, the news for Microsoft is not all
good. Windows NT continues to lose ground, and has now fallen to
eighth in the table, its lowest position since 1995.
Demand for Office and for two of its components, Access and Excel,
also fell by more than the market average.
Better news is that demand for the Windows 2000 operating system
has doubled, although from a small base - there were only 300
positions involved. Nonetheless, this is easily the biggest
increase of any skill in the top 50, and has taken Windows 2000
into the top 20 for the first time.
Unix enthusiasts also have something to cheer about. True, demand
for Unix itself fell by more than 50%, prompting a three place
slide down the table to seventh. But Solaris, Sun's variant, bucked
this trend with a fall in demand of just 20%, which has pushed it
four places up the table to 14th. IBM's equivalent, AIX, actually
featured in 10 more ads than a year ago, taking it 17 places up the
table to 27th.
Linux is not yet attracting significant interest from advertisers,
despite the vociferous enthusiasm of the open source lobby and
despite IBM's success in wooing some blue chip customers with Linux
mainframes. The operating system appeared in just 80 ads over the
quarter, half as many as in the first three months of the year.
More good news for Microsoft is the upwards progress of SQL, which
has made it into the top three for the first time. In the software
house sector alone it was in first place, a rise of three places
since the first quarter of this year. Java, Internet and C++ are
the skills it has overtaken.
Advertising for database specialists was relatively strong over the
quarter, and this has undoubtedly helped SQL and Oracle, which has
moved up two places to fourth. It has not helped Sybase, though,
which has plummeted 14 places down the table to fall out of the top
25.
Only one other skill in the top 25 featured in more ads this time
than in the corresponding quarter a year ago, and that was SAP, up
slightly by percentage but by eight places in the table. Demand
here was led by the manufacturing and engineering sectors, which
between them accounted for more than a third of all the SAP
requirement. SAP was at the top of each of these sector league
tables over the past three months.
Mainframe sites reduced their advertising by less than other
installations during the three months, and this is reflected in the
skills league table. Cobol, DB2, Cics, MVS and IMS are all higher
up than they were a year ago.
Two skills have disappeared from the table this time that have
featured in it since the table was introduced in 1989. Linc, used
on Burroughs mainframes, and Synon, used on AS/400s, were
fourth-generation development environments popular at the beginning
of the 1990se before the move to object-oriented development took
hold. Most similar products disappeared from the table some time
ago. Fourth-generation languages have not shown the same resilience
as their third-generation predecessors, many of which are still in
regular use. One of these is Ada, which has been enjoying a revival
since 1998, when it fell outside the top 60. This quarter it
features in the top 20 for the third quarter in succession.