The movement in professional job vacancies in Ireland in the first quarter of 2023 was relatively flat compared to the previous quarter, with a slight increase of 0.86%.
However, the number of jobs on offer has almost doubled since December 2022, recovering from the cyclical decrease that the market experiences at the end of every year.
Compared to the same quarter in the previous year, there has been no significant change, with the number of professional jobs coming to market decreasing only marginally by 0.15%.
The Morgan McKinley Employment Monitor also recorded an overall increase of 13% in the number of professionals actively seeking new job opportunities between Q4 2022 and Q1 2023. More significantly, there are 38% more professionals actively seeking new opportunities than there was a year previously in Q1 2022.
The number of professional job seekers has reached the highest monthly level over the last 18 months in March 2023 representing a 16% sequential increase from February 2023, and a 40% increase from the same month of the prior year (March 2022).
The high number of professionals currently seeking employment can be attributed to a delay in those who received redundancy payments last year returning to the job market. Instead, some took time out to reset before putting themselves back on the employment market. Additionally, there is a pool of skilled professionals who have upgraded their skills to pursue better career opportunities in the market.
Salaries have remained stable from the previous quarter. They remain competitive, although employers are less flexible than before to go above the market rate. Employers are now putting more of a focus on retaining good talent, rather than attracting new candidates.
The Morgan McKinley employment monitor measures the pulse of the Irish professional jobs market by tracking the number of new job vacancies and new candidates in the Republic of Ireland each quarter. To reflect the changing dynamics of the current employment market, Morgan McKinley are including both permanent and contract jobs in the employment monitor.
Tracy Keevans, Global FDI Director, Morgan McKinley Ireland, said: “The Irish job market has remained resilient despite recent layoffs in the technology sector. Although the number of professional job vacancies has remained relatively stable, we have seen an increase in demand for certain skills, particularly in engineering, life sciences and construction sectors. The number of professionals actively seeking new job opportunities has increased significantly.
“Despite the cautionary approach to hiring in the technology sector, the number of jobs coming to market has grown. The biggest area of hiring has been in cyber security. This is not surprising considering the findings of a recent PWC report which found that 88% of Irish executives noted an increase in cyberattacks since 2020 – due to increased digital acceleration in their organisations as well as new risks around cloud adoption, third party outsourcing and digitised supply chains. These positions included cyber security engineers, cyber analysts, Infosec Analysts and SOC Managers who have most actively been hired in the banking and financial services sector. Programming languages such as Java and Python are the most in demand languages.”
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