The good news is Australia officially averted a recession. However, the bad news in the employment sector continues. Gains are small (SEEK Employment Index saw a modest rise), and the hard times promises to continue for a while longer.

When times are hard, everyone needs to adapt; everyone learns to adapt. Internal departments, individual companies and whole industries are adapting to the changed environment. So, how are talent solution providers adapting? What is a good strategy to take in a downturn?  Read more...

Overall, the economy is not healthy. The DEEWR’s Leading Indicator of Employment has fallen for the seventeenth consecutive month.  

Manpower’s latest survey also paints a pretty bleak picture of employers’ sentiment, with the index heading to negative territory.

The latest Skill Vacancy Index , which monitors the number of job vacancies advertised on newspapers, is down by 62.6% from last year. Likewise the new Internet Vacancy Index (now aggregating data from SEEK, MyCareer, CareerOne and Australian JobSearch) is down by 7.7%.  Read more...

I got a note from a friend, a quality IT recruiter who has been in the recruitment profession for many years. His comments:

“I am seeing hundreds of people on the market at the moment.  Top quality candidates that can’t find work.  Some of them have been on the market since November.  And yet I still see companies in Australia offshoring jobs.  It seems that while the times were good the ‘offshoring jobs’ had little impact on employment in Australia.  But now (downturn market) it seems to be seriously impacting unemployment rates in the IT space. It seems that most companies in the top 100 ASX have offshore IT jobs in some capacity.  Read more...