IT remains one of the more positive industry sectors in recruitment firm Hudson’s latest survey of employer hiring intentions.
However, staffing plans among the IT employers polled in the latest survey — which asked them about their intentions for April-June 2009 — have crashed from levels recorded in the previous survey; they're down 28.4 percentage points.
Nonetheless, the net effect was still positive at 7.8%, which compares favourably to most other industry sectors covered by the survey. The “net” figure is arrived at by taking the percentage of employers surveyed that expect to increase staffing levels, and subtracting the percentage who intend to reduce staffing levels.
In construction/property/engineering, the result is a net effect of -15.8%.
The commentary accompanying the latest survey results notes:
“The IT industry has weighed heavily on employer sentiment nationally, with sentiment dropping a sharp 28.4 percentage points from the result reported in our last survey.
“Whereas just a year ago, organisations across the board were investing heavily in technology to transform their businesses, a vast array of projects are now on hold as small businesses, large companies and government alike look to reduce spending on anything outside of core business.
“Despite the downturn in project work, a net 7.8% of employers are nevertheless still intending to increase permanent staff, due to the continuation of business-as-usual work for in-house IT teams and outsourced service providers,” the commentary says.
Hudon surveyed 1,673 employers across all industry sectors, from small to medium to large companies, for the survey.