Recruitment Agencies see massive job bounce-back!

We all know what happened to Recruitment demand from March onwards last year. It was disastrous.

In Australia and New Zealand at least, we have seen massive improvements. Many Agencies are in growth mode.

Anecdotally, despite everything, pipelines were filling up in the last Quarter of 2020.

But where is the empirical data? Is it all hot air? Maybe just confined to a few booming sectors?

The answer is ‘no’, it is not fabricated. There was a massive bounce back in the second half of last year. And thanks to JobAdder, we have the data to prove it.

‘New jobs created’ in the JobAdder platform is a powerful indicator of recruitment demand because it measures the number of new vacancies that the many thousands of recruiters who use JobAdder enter into the system. It does not tell us whether they filled them. But it certainly ‘takes the temperature’ of the market because it is a direct measure of employer hiring, and therefor of business confidence.

In this data, generously provided to me by Martin Herbst, CEO of JobAdder and his hard-working marketing team (Sarah, Adelle, and a nappy-changing Christina), we have the benefit of the past five quarters to consider. In Australia, we can see a nice surge in demand in Quarter 1 2020 and a small uptick in New Zealand for the same Quarter. Remember those carefree pre-Covid days? Then, of course, Quarter 2 2020 was when the reality and the full impact of Covid lockdowns, travel bans, and job losses hit. I acutely recall the meetings with clients I had at that time. Panic reigned, and my main job was to instil calm and clarity of thought.

You can get the full report here!

                                                                                 New Jobs Created: Australia

In some cases, job-orders dropped by 50% or even more in the space of a month. It was shocking and terrifying, and we can see that in the data here. Quarter 2 2020 saw a 36.7% drop in new jobs in both Australia and New Zealand. What this does not show is the volume of open job orders that were cancelled in that Quarter! So the actual number of workable agency jobs dropped much more than 37%, I can assure you. Both countries bounced back strongly in Quarter 3 2020, somewhat surprisingly for Australia, where Victoria went into lockdown version 2. Growth continued in Quarter 4, albeit much subdued.

                                                                                   New Jobs Created: New Zealand

Significantly, when we consider Quarter 4 2020 with the same Quarter in 2019, we see jobs entered in the JobAdder system was only 1.9% down in Australia and in New Zealand 4.5% down. When you reflect on the year recruiters went through in 2020 and the level of despair felt by many, that is a remarkable and heartening result.

Get the full report from JobAdder here (Free of course)

Now here is the exciting news.

JobAdder is preparing new data to be released early next Quarter. The figures will be updated and include Q1 2021 vs Q1 2020.

Thanks, JobAdder.