Over 1,000 jobs should be generated by the end of July 2006, according to the Winter 2005 – Spring 2006 Employment Barometer issued by the Employment Training Corporation.
The large majority of these jobs (43.2 per cent) will be new positions, 39.1 per cent will be vacated positions, 2.4 per cent will replace temporary absentees and the remaining 15.3 per cent are for other reasons.
The Employment Barometer is a labour market instrument to determine short-run labour market shortages and recruitment problems faced by employers in the local labour market.
The survey is conducted every six months and approximately 1,400 employers with more than five employees from all economic sectors are randomly selected for the survey.
Over 65 per cent of the employers interviewed said that until July, there will be no change in their current level of demand for their products or services.
However, 18.5 per cent expect an increase in demand for their products while 15 per cent expect a decrease.
Employers operating within the financial services, food and beverages, manufacture, and other service activities said they expect a higher demand
Their positive perceptions were attributed to improved marketing techniques (24.2 per cent), a recovery in the economic sector (10 per cent), and demand for the product (8.1 per cent).
The most requested full-time jobs until July include machine operators and assemblers, waiters, executive and administrative officers, clerks, customer care, housekeeping and room attendants, salespersons, engineers and cleaners.
The part-time jobs expected to be in demand include waiters, customer care, fast food crew members, housekeeping and room attendants, domestic helpers and cleaners, care workers, teaching professionals, delivery persons and clerks.
Almost 79 per cent of the employers said they did not face any particular skill shortages or recruitment problems since July 2005. Over 49 per cent of the remaining employers said the candidates did not have the necessary qualifications or the required skills for the job. Another 44 per cent reported that they suffered from both kinds of shortages, while the remaining seven per cent said they experienced a shortage without specifying which one.
Seventy per cent of those facing recruitment problems managed to solve them through internal re-distribution of work (31.8 per cent), experienced longer recruitment procedures (30.6 per cent), recruited foreigners (14.1 per cent) or outsourced their services (4.7 per cent).
The lack of candidates forced employers to ask for longer working hours, resulting in higher human resource costs. However, it also encouraged employers to start their own training activities (16 per cent) or further enhance their existing courses (15 per cent).
According to the report, there was a shortage of applicants for the following jobs: accountants, research analysts, teaching professionals for the tertiary sector, insurance representatives and fast food crewmembers.
There was a surplus of candidates for general managers, computer programmers and professionals, sales representatives, clerks, cooks, room attendants, customer care, handymen, kitchen hands and security officers among others.