Employment dispute in Christchurch where a business faced consequences for dismissing an employee before their start date, resulting in an $18.5K payout.
19 May 2021
2021 – A job hunter's market
As an organisation, EQ Consultants works across many sectors, assisting clients with their recruitment requirements. On average, we are seeing a drop in the number of applications, particularly in areas where, traditionally, we’ve been inundated with enquiries. This is proving to be a national trend – particularly in selected industries, as vacancies outweigh people wanting to move into new roles. Recent employment data outlines the difficulty in this article from Radio New Zealand below:
‘Job website Seek recorded the highest number of jobs it had ever advertised in March.
Ads were up by 55 per cent in March 2021 when compared to the same month last year.
Janet Faulding, Seek NZ general manager, said the growth in job ads showed how far the nation had come since the beginning of the pandemic.
“March 2021 paints a very different picture to March 2020, when the Covid-19 outbreak made its presence felt on the New Zealand labour market, with jobs ads dropping from mid-March. We are now a year on, and we’re thrilled to see the highest number of jobs ever advertised on Seek,” she said.
Canterbury led the regions in job vacancy growth, with a 60 per cent increase year-on-year, while Wellington had a 55 per cent growth in listed vacancies and Auckland increased by 44 per cent.
Industries with the highest job ad growth month-on-month by volume were information and communication technology, up 13 per cent, retail and consumer products, up 29 per cent and trades and services, up 13 per cent.
The number of hospitality vacancies increased 32.5 per cent compared with February.
Every region had increases in job ads month on month and year-on-year, Faulding said.
Auckland had the most growth month-on-month, with a 13 per cent rise in job vacancies in March compared with February.
Despite the week-long alert level 3 lockdown in Auckland at the start of March, Faulding said there didn’t appear to be any lingering effect.
“Although the lockdown impacted the Auckland region the most, we still saw significant growth in Auckland and the surrounding areas. In fact, four of the top seven regions were Auckland, Waikato, Northland and Bay of Plenty,” she said.
However, while job vacancies were up 11 per cent on February, applications per job ad fell 7 per cent in March compared with a month earlier.
“One of the knock-on effects of high job ad numbers is that applications per job ad ratio fall. In February, applications per ad dropped 7 per cent month on month,” Faulding said.
As well as the increase in job ads, there are likely many other reasons contributing to this decline such as a reduced labour supply impacting the ability to fill roles and workers displaying a more cautious approach to career moves following a turbulent year.”’
Article via Radio New Zealand.
If you are in hiring mode, please give EQ Consultants a call. Our extensive recruitment database and social media outlets provide us with a wide range of options for sourcing candidates and enable us to find the talent and organisational ‘fit’ that you require.