Things might not look too hot at the moment, but pretty soon knowledge worker skills are going to be in demand again and the employers who showed a dark side during the recession will struggle to fill vacancies.

Despite the recession, New Zealand still has a severe shortage of building industry skills and there are pockets of the IT business where vacancies have remained since the global economic meltdown began.

Australia is already showing signs a severe shortage of IT skills could hamper companies and government departments as early as next year. For example in Demand for ICT professionals on the rise, bottom is in Stan Beer at iTNews reports; “The bottom in ICT employment has been reached and demand for skilled jobs is once again on the rise, according to the latest market survey from a major technology recruiter. The news adds to a growing list of evidence of a return to health of the ICT jobs scene.”

A week earlier ITNews covered a report from Australia’s largest recruiter Peoplebank saying the demand for contractors was rising. A similar story appeared in CIO magazine in June with Seek Employment noting the overall job market was stabilising with IT consultants in high demand.

Australia’s ITNews reprinted a story from Britain’s Computing newspaper on July 7 saying the antipodean nation is busily recruiting IT specialist in the UK to meet a shortage.

On a related note, The Australian reported on a skills shortage in research organisations in Upgrade ignores skills shortage. And the New Zealand Herald reports there are many shortages in engineering.

The New Zealand edition of CIO magazine carried a report which suggests the majority of employers in the IT sector still face a skills shortage despite the recession. Despite downturn, opportunities remain for APAC IT candidates suggests one in four tech employers expect to increase their headcount this year. The story singles out specific skills in business analysis, datawarehousing, ERP (Oracle/SAP), web development and infrastructure (architecture) as being of particular interest.”

Some shortsightedness is in evidence in IT training budgets slashed at ITNews which suggests employers have slashed skills spending and can expect to see a serious skills vacuum by 2112.

What does this mean?

First, it’s a safe bet the skills shortage will return to Australia in the next year or so and to New Zealand soon after – the two countries are effectively a single market for knowledge workers. If anything it could be worse than before for a couple of reasons. Many skilled workers will have drifted off into other occupations or even early retirement. At the same time employers have cut back on training during the recession. While there are increased numbers of people taking tertiary courses in technology and similar subjects, many won’t enter the workforce in time for the recovery and they’ll have knowledge, but little experience, which means only a handful will hit the ground running.

Employers who behaved cut back staff, skimped on training or held on to skilled workers and pushed them too hard during the recession will all suffer once the skills shortage kicks in again. Knowledge workers will be able to drive better bargains – and recent experience will teach people to look beyond the pay packet.

The optimistic interpretation of the latest Olivier Job Index information technology figures says while the number of job ads continues to fall – the rate at which job ad numbers are falling has slowed. In other words, things are continuing to get worse, but not dramatically so. In fact the official line from Robert Olivier in this press release says things are stabilizing.

The Olivier Job Index measures the number of advertised job. In June the number of tech jobs fell 1.9 percent from May. They were down almost 57 percent from the same time a year ago. Both numbers represent a faster decline for tech jobs than for the overall job market.

According to a report last week in The Australian (Tech employment pool drying up by Jennifer Foreshew) only 16 percent of senior managers in Australia’s corporate sector expect to hire staff in the next 12 months and about a third intend to reduce their headcount. Foreshew spoke to a number of companies who made similar comments about a lack of new work.

Official figures issued by Australia’s Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) on Friday say the number of IT professional job vacancies dropped 7.5 percent in June compared with May. Year-on-year the total number of jobs declined by 63 percent.

New Zealand IT sector now positive

A report in today’s Computerworld New Zealand (New Hudson survey shows IT more positive by David Watson) draws on quarterly figures from the recruitment firm Hudson. It says a net 16.4 percent of employers intend to increase permanent staffing levels in the June to September quarter. That’s up from the previous quarter’s 7.7 percent figure.

Computerworld Australia reports IT job advertisements continued their slide in May, which is bad news for tech-oriented knowledge workers. Overall job ads fell by 4 percent in May and 52 percent for the 12 month period ending in May. The number of IT job ads fell 58 percent over the 12 months. The numbers are taken from Olivier job index

The good news is the decline is is slowing down and part-time and contract positions were up during the month.

via IT jobs slump 5% in May: Olivier – Computerworld.

On Wednesday Paul Smith wrote Job seekers are frozen out of market for the Information page in The Australian Financial Review.

Smith says almost half of Australian organisations have imposed a freeze on hiring information technology workers. He also said more than a quarter of IT employers have laid off staff this year.

The story is based on research by Hudson, a specialist recruitment agency which says the financial and professional service sectors have been hardest hit and the situation is most difficult in Western Australian.

Go East, because that’s where the tech jobs are. Network World reports on a Robert Walters survey saying Hong Kong IT vacancies are up 22.6 percent in the first quarter of 2009. It could be a good place for unemployed or underemployed Australians and New Zealanders to sit out the recession.

Hong Kong IT vacancies up 22.6 percent in Q1 – Network World.

Is Auckland a jobs oasis for IT specialists?

Well that’s what specialist recruitment firm Potentia says in an upbeat report on jobs with Auckland’s technology companies.

The company surveyed 453 organisations and found the jobs market is still expanding. Highlights include:

• A third of companies plan to expand. Only 10 percent are focused on survival.
• Half of the companies expect to hire more staff, with contractors accounting for nearly half of those new positions.
• Salaries are not likely to rise.

So, not much dosh, precious little security, but plenty of work for those who want it. In global terms that makes Auckland a beacon of employment hope. (And it’s a good place to live too).

The report is essential reading for all New Zealand technology professionals and describes a possible escape route for worried Australians knowledge workers.

As an aside, Potentia could do with some professional communications help. The report is poorly written. It is too long and has far too many complex, jargon-packed sentences. This makes for dreary reading. The company’s sales pitch inserted near the start comes across as crass. This is a shame as, with better presentation, this could be a first class piece of marketing communications that speaks for itself.

Computerworld (US edition) lists some of the grubbiest jobs in information technology.

You may be ordered to crawl into the nastiest corners of your office — or to explore the nastiest corners of the Web. You may be required to stare zombie-like at a network monitoring console, waiting (possibly hoping) for the alarms to go off, or be chained to an endless series of spreadsheets and Word docs, looking for minute differences in data. You may end up berated, belittled, or sobbed at for circumstances that have nothing to do with you.

Even dirtier IT jobs: The muck stops here – data crisis, engineers, IT jobs, malware – Computerworld

Ex-pat kiwis looking to return home may need to rethink their plans with unemployment set to rise sharply. The latest Hudson Report, Hiring Expectations says New Zealand’s employers don’t expect to be taking on many new workers in the coming months and many expect to cut staff numbers.

Under the headline ‘Employer hiring expectations tumble’, Niko Kloeten at The National Business Review writes; “Unemployment looks set to jump – a new survey shows 24% of New Zealand employers are looking to shed permanent staff in the next three months.” The NBR says the figures are the worst since the first Hudson Report was published in 1999.

Things are particularly bad in the IT sector. IT Brief (a trade publication) reports; “The sector has entered into a cautious phase as businesses around New Zealand continue to downsize, recruitment specialist Hudson says.” The company’s recent report showed the IT industry had experience a 28.4 percent decline.

In ‘Employers’ hiring expectations plummet’ The New Zealand Herald quotes Hudson executive general manager Marc Burrage saying; “”With cost and demand pressures on businesses mounting, some employers have had to rapidly reassess their workforce strategies. We are seeing some employers talking to their employees about reductions in salary levels or offering flexible working practices, such as job sharing, to help retain the talent they’ve worked so hard to develop.”