Job market tightens as workers look around

Employers should give greater thought to their recruitment and staff retention strategies as job advertising continues to rise and the employment market tightens, labour reports suggest.

Seek and Trade Me, the country's largest online job sites, both reveal an increased number of advertised jobs in the first quarter of the year.

Trade Me reports 33,000 jobs advertised in the quarter ending March, 25 per cent more compared to the same period last year.

Seek, on the other hand, records that in the month of March alone, jobs listing jumped 46 per cent to 17,500 compared to the same month last year.

BNZ chief economist Tony Alexander says the strong rise in job advertising despite the economy having been "very weak" for almost a year is tightening the labour market.

"We expect that as growth accelerates from later this year the New Zealand labour market risks tightening up quite quickly," Alexander says.

Seek says job listings reached a 12-month high in March, "however, the number of applications grew at a faster rate than jobs".

From January to March, Seek says the number of online job applications on its site rose by a "very significant" 90,000 compared to an undisclosed number in the same period in 2010.

Seek general manager Janet Faulding says the increase in applications is consistent with its 2010 year-end Satisfaction and Motivation report which identified that nearly seven out ten employees are "keeping their eyes open" for other options.

Two in five were planning to leave their employment in the first half of 2011.

"The increase in applications we have seen over the past three months suggests Kiwis are now responding to a rise in the number of jobs advertised and are actively applying for roles," Faulding says.

Mercer's Market Issues survey reports that stalled pay rises is one of the reasons why more employees are on the lookout for new jobs.

Sarah Barnaby, a senior associate at Mercer says salary increases have dipped to 2.5 per cent by the end of February this year after peaking at 5.2 per cent in early 2009.

And compared to 2010, salary movements have remained at the national median of 2.5 per cent in all regions, apart from Auckland where pay movements fell from 3.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent.

Seek says the other main drivers given for employee restlessness is being given increased tasks and responsibilities within the same role and a general feeling of being unappreciated.

Trade Me Jobs head Peter Ashby says there is ongoing boom in the IT and transport and logistics sectors where job advertising increased by 75 and 54 percent respectively.

Trade and services listings had also increased significantly, up 34 per cent on the same period a year ago," Ashby says.

Seek says the most competitive jobs are roles in the call centre customer service sector "receiving thousands of applications for every job advertised followed by receptionist, IT help desk and waiting staff jobs".

- BusinessDay.co.nz