IT jobs down but online ads up

The demand for Australian IT professionals fell 7 per cent last month, while the online IT index has returned positive results for the past two months.

According to the EL Executive Demand Index, overall demand for Australian executives rose 6 per cent in July "as businesses started the new financial year with confidence".

Among the different executive groups, all sectors registered positive results except for IT.

The managing director of executive search firm and publisher of the EL Index, Grant Montgomery, said deeper analysis of the IT result showed that while new positions fell overall from last month, Internet adverting for this sector rose.

"Information technology is still at a very low ebb but it is likely when recovery occurs it will be through the Internet advertising. The days of massive technology position ads covering the newspapers is probably over.

"IT executive recruitment is migrating to the web to a much greater extent than in other executive groups," Montgomery said.

The Index also found that the gap between business and government sector demand for IT professionals remained constant, with the IT business sector falling by 6 per cent, while the IT government sector fell 7 per cent.

Although demand in the business sector rose strongly in Western Australia, the gains there were overwhelmed by losses in Victoria and New South Wales.

The position was reversed in the government sector, with a better performance from NSW unable to bring the Index into positive territory due to losses in the smaller states such as Tasmania, South Australia, the ACT, and the Northern Territory.

Meanwhile, Montgomery said in terms of executive employment, the engineering executive group of 2003 is equivalent to the IT executive group of the late 1990s where both groups witnessed demand far in excess of the other executive groups.

"Engineering executives are the new IT executives when it comes to the wealth of jobs on offer," he said.

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